Log:Night at the Museum: Discovery

Night At The Museum 2021/06/29 	 Night Marshal Grimm

1

It's been a generally uneventful evening in lurking around the 'usual suspect' areas of Colonial Bay -- a couple of muggings stopped, a half-dozen fights broken up, a B&E at an electronics shop. It's fairly late -- a little after 3 AM -- when the police band squawks. "Closest units, please respond to a 459-S at 2401 South Stardancer Boulevard." Night Marshal will know that a 459-S is a silent burglary alarm tripping; Grimm will recognize 2401 S. Stardancer Blvd. as being the Science Museum!!

Grimm opens a gate to the Alien District after Night Marshal informs her of what he heard on the police band. She tries to aim as close as she can without being to out in the open. She can open a second gate closer once she's close enough to sense things in the area with her qliphothic senses.

Grimm spitballs irreverantly, "Maybe there's a person out of time looking for historic weapons they're familiar with from their time?"

Night Marshal chuckles. "Maybe. Can you sense anything inside?"

The aether must be particularly clear tonight; Grimm can sense the energies of a spell unravelling within one particular section of the museum, a place with a lot of metals and suchlike. They're sure to become only traces within a minute or two, though, so if she wants a closer look, they'll have to go in quickly.

Night Marshal does see the residual heat of the day clinging to the building's form; it's cooling down, of course, but there's little else. The windows are, of course, the coolest places from the air conditioning, but it doesn't look like anything is particularly out of place ...

"A...spell. Someone's cast a spell in there. Feels like a lot of hard metals where it's happening. But at this rate, we better hurry before the magic disappates," Grimm explains.

Night Marshal nods. "Can you get us inside, then? I can go through first."

"Getting inside is easy." Grimm chuckles at a thought. "Maybe I missed my calling as a world class burglar," she teases as she begins to open a portal. "You sure you want to go first?" she asks quietly before the portal opens. She's awestruck at his heroic offering.

Night Marshal draws his pistol. "You're the person with the way in and out. Yeah, it makes sense if I go through first." He waits for the portal to open before he steps through.

Grimm blinks at that. "Okay. Good point," she says as the portal opens up fully.

Night Marshal steps through cautiously, and looks around.

Unnatural opening!! Eerie passage!! Yowie-zowie, that's not a way for a person to travel -- but it IS the way for a Hero of the Night when paired with the Mistress of Tenebration, Queen of Shades, the GRIMM TRAVE*cough cough cough* Traveller.

The wing of the museum in which Grimm places the gate is quiet at least, and draped in all the shadowy goodness (or, you know, badness) that a manipulator of Darkness might want. First through, Night Marshal looks swiftly around, six-gun leading the way, but true to the 'silent alarm' name, there's no screeches or wailing going off. There /is/ the sound of footsteps clipping along the marble floor, getting slowly louder (and therefore closer).

Once Grimm's through, she can sense the no-longer-slowly unravelling strands of a spell -- something, it would appear, /specifically/ designed to stifle a silent alarm -- or perhaps just any alarm. It's about three meters in radius at this point, centered upon one particular case.

This is, notably, the metallurgy section.

Grimm motions to her eyes with Night Marshal, then points toward the case where she's sensing some magic, keeping quiet as she hears footsteps.

Night Marshal finds no broken glass or anything (this stuff is thumb-thick), and nothing seems to be outright missing; the lock (old-fashionedly physical, but a two-key lock that would be /just/ a bit too wide for most people to do themselves) doesn't look like it's been tampered with on a quick scan.

Night Marshal says quietly to Grimm, "Nothing seems to be broken. I bet someone used magic to get inside. The lock would be tough for a single person."

Grimm nods slowly. "There's...two spells that were cast here. One to keep the alarm from being heard. The other is an illusion spell. I can't quite pin down what it was, but it's not active anymore. I can still feel traces of it."

Night Marshal nods, and tries to head toward the footsteps he heard...and attempts to keep quiet as he does so.

Grimm hesitates to use magic to quiet Night Marshal's and her own footsteps, because the use of magic might alert their target. She tries being quiet the old fashioned way.

Ghosting down the hall, both of the heroes pad as quietly with their current footgear on the freshly-polished marble as they would have in their stockinged feet; reaching the door to the full wing (metallurgy is considered a 'room') that's closer to where the voice is, they can suddenly make out voices -- low, but because of the stone, they carry, in part because the people walking (not well) are trying to whisper, which is not the type of voice you want to use while sneaking; too harsh, too sibilant, to not carry.

"I don't know why!! I mean, in the eighteenth century, they were phasing them out, it's not so old as to be /really/ valuable -- we just have it here as an example of the use in weapons at the time!!"

"Are you sure? I mean, a spear-head --"

"-- is just a three-hundred-year-old spear-head -- hell, you can find a hundred of them, and older, in British bloody castles!! I know, my wife dragged me to every effin' one in the north of England last year!!"

"Man, relax, will ya?"

Night Marshal puts a finger to his lips to try to indicate to Grimm to remain quiet...and remain the ace in teh hole, so to speak. He steps out from cover, aiming his gun at the two. "Hands where I can see 'em, partners."

Grimm nods silently and sticks behind cover to hide while he presents himself as the only hero. It's also a great place to watch him work. She grins to herself at his cowboy affectation, which fooled her for a long time when they were working together without her knowing who he really was.

Night Marshal sees a weapon being brought up...and remembering that his firearm is decidedly non-lethal right now, he takes the shot.

The two cresting the wide museum steps are, well ... one is thicker than the other, who has his weapon out and half-pointed forward. At the movement and the voice, the man yelps a swear and jerks his weapon upwards, but the *crack* of the Night Marshal's gun going off comes first, echoing down the museum halls.

The non-lethal slug smacks the guy right in the chest, but his positioning is not good; he starts to fall backwards, which means down the /marble/ stairs. They may be shallow steps, but it is undoubtedly still a dangerous situation, and hurting museum guards is probably not something either of the two heroes wanted to do today ...

Grimm remains flattened and crouched as Night Marshal shoots. Even from her hiding spot, she can feel the two men within. Her eyes widen as she senses the guy's body go limp and start to fall back. Her fingers twist as she concentrates, black energy weaving around and between them. The criminal's shadow rises up from the ground to try to prop him up as he falls, intending to then tip him forward and away from the stairs so he can land safely on flat ground.

The man sways back, then sways forward and falls flat, safe from the stairs as his shadow lays flat again.

A gunshot!! Security Officer Stan Hardy yelps in surprise, his partner (Security Officer Oliver Laurel) forgotten for a moment as the latter's taser goes 'k-chunk' and fires its pair of darts over Night Marshal's head and into the ceiling. There it snaps for a moment as Grimm's eyes get big as she realizes the inadvertent danger Mr. Laurel is in, and proceeds to save him. "T-take a-a-anything you want," he blurts, "it's all insuranced and everything!!"

Night Marshal sighs as he sees who he shot. "Damn it. I should have...known better." He shakes his head and walks over closer, holstering his gun. "I'm sorry. I was trigger happy. Your colleague should be be okay. That round I hit him with wasn't lethal. There was an alarm tripped here. I...foolishly assumed it was you two."

Night Marshal hesitates. Unless it IS them?

Grimm is pretty suspicious, but these two don't sound like the magic using type. She stays hidden and tries to expand her senses again to canvas the area.

That'll require a bit of conversation with them -- winnow out their story, get a sense of their reactions. Mr. Hardy seems /quite/ open to talking instead of, you know, being shot -- even if it /was/ with a non-lethal round. "Y-y-y-y-y-y-sure, I can go with that. No, wasn't us, we were comin' up to check it out -- geez, it went off in the office only a couple minutes ago, tops."

Night Marshal tilts his head, "If you were coming up to check it out, you were being kind of lackadaisical about it, weren't you? Stopping to take in the sights? It's an alarm."

The security guard stares at Night Marshal for a couple of moments with incomprehension clear on his face. "It's a /silent/ alarm, so you can get a look at who done it. There wasn't anybody on the cameras, so we came up to look -- quiet-like -- and we didn't stop to take in the sights, either!!" He sounds a little offended at the insult.

Grimm, having saved the toppling man and pulled her spooky tentacles back in, sends her unsight through the rest of the museum. There are five other people here, one person sitting down at a bank of televisions (well, 'lighted boxes' which Grimm knows well are the security camera monitors) while the other four tend to maintenance -- two in another wing entirely, working floor machines which she can juuust barely hear from here, two others running those wide dustmops across the floor and changing out the trash bags in a third wing.

Grimm frowns at the lack of evidence of another person. Either they're doing a hell of a job using a spell to conceal themselves, or they're already gone.

Night Marshal looks at the guard, trying to see if there's any kind of 'tell' from him. He nods slowly. "I see. And that's all you knew? The alarm was tripped?" He goes to check on the downed man to try to help him come around.

Hardy hesitates, his hands drifting downwards and now at shoulder level; he's a museum security guard, here mostly to check to make sure things are locked up, not because he's particularly fit. "Well ... yes!! I mean, I can point out," he sidles nervously away when Night Marshal comes over to check on his partner, "I can point out which thing got stolen. Ollie was all upset about it. His wife's a history nut, I guess, but the thing was in there only as an example of, uh ... I don't remember. Metal use in the military or something like that."

Night Marshal nods, "You can drop your hands, too. I'm not going to shoot you." He tries to wake up the downed guy, "Let's see if we can get your friend to wake up first...but then I'd like you to show us what was taken."

Guard Laurel groans, stirring at the gentle ministrations of the night-time cowboy crime-fighter. "... whuzzaah ... 's happen'?"

Night Marshal nods, "Sorry I shot you, guy. I thought you were the burglar. You should be okay. That round won't have any lasting effect on you."

Grimm thinks for a moment. The only clues she has on her end is the residual magic. She needs to get closer to it, and track down that illusion spell to see where it was cast. Maybe being closer will help. She tries to reach out to Night Marshal with her mind, hoping he'll accept a linking of minds. It's still something she's not too comfortable doing with him, but he wanted her to keep quiet.

Night Marshal accepts the mind link. He thinks to Grimm, << I suppose you might want to make yourself known. Otherwise, they're going to assume you're the burglar if you're spotted. >>

The traces of the second spell are indeed faint, almost completely faded into the normal background; frankly, if you weren't you, you'd've probably missed the second spell entirely, and you're picking up the very last traces of it now; it's /very/ good, and possibly -- probably? -- fae work. What you can 'spot' wends through both the front-facing public areas of the museum as well as several of the back areas, though -- and this is just a guess, since all you know of the back area is what you're finding out with a 'general area zoomed look', as it were -- no particular /sensitive/ areas. Offices, yes, but not any secure areas at all.

Night Marshal

This man looks like a modern-day high-tech cowboy. He stands about five-nine, and looks fairly muscular. He's wearing a pair of leather pants and rugged hiking boots. His arms are covered in some layered metal plating which shifts to allow movement but provides a fair amount of protection. It's a safe bet that other portions of his body are protected similarly, but the armor might be covered by his clothing. On his torso is a simple blue leather vest and underlying body armor with a marshal's star pinned to the left breast. He wears a cowboy hat, and a simple black mask that has a glowing red eyepiece over one eye.

Strapped to his thigh is a revolver in a gunslinger's holster.

Laurel looks up at the high-tech cowboy, then nods and carefully climbs on his own onto his own two feet. "Uh ... sure. No, no real damage, no hard feelings, I ... I guess?" He pats himself down then, looking warily sideways at Night Marshal as if for permission, sidles towards where he'd dropped his taser.

<< Mmmm. And then you'd have to catch me.>> Gabrielle teases even as she tries to focus on the fading magic. << I think the illusion I'm sensing is closer to fae magic? Damn, it's good. It winds through parts of the museum. It might be where our perp traveled undetected. If I can follow it...maybe we can still catch up.>> Gabrielle rises from her crouch and steps out carefully. "Night Marshal, I think I have a potential trail here." << They may have walked out without a hitch with some disguise, or just concealed from view in general. They didn't seem to go into any secure areas that I can feel out. >>

Night Marshal nods and motions to the taser, "Go ahead." He stands back up. "Your partner was going to show me where the missing item had been." He motions to Grimm, "She's with me. We were both responding to the alarm."

The two men twitch as Grimm comes out, then look at each other, then Night Marshal and his reassurances; warily Hardy nods while Laurel finishes retrieving (and then recovering the darts of) his taser. Once that's done, Laurel holsters the thing, and the two lead the way back into the Metallurgy room. They go right up to the case Night Marshal had inspected, and Hardy leans over it to say, "See, this right ... huh. It's still there."

"It is??" says Laurel, leaning over to look. "It is. See, that's the kind of thing makes me think about movin' to somewhere like, I don't know, Topeka or something."

Night Marshal raises a brow. "It was...gone? Which item are you talking about?"

Laurel taps the glass. "That spear-head. Hessian manufacture, seventeen twenty-four; see how it's been modified to fit into a musket barrel, making it a bayonet?"

"Well," adds the thick-set Hardy, "that's the item that's had its alarm triggered. I ... guess we could open up the case, make sure it is ... ? We'd have to call down, get permission, though."

Night Marshal shakes his head, "No, don't open the case." He looks to Grimm, "Is it in there? Or is it an illusion?"

Grimm looks perplexed as she studies the spear-head. "What's it made of? What type of metal?" She takes in a deep breath and watches the spear intensely. "It's as real as I can tell. But that illusion spell's trail stops here. I'm still mapping it out. And no spell or rift to get out of here, which makes me think...maybe they backtracked. Without the illusion. It's ...gone now. I can try and remember its path to follow where it originated, and maybe the way they left."

The two security guards look at each other, then at Grimm, then shrug and peer down at the card. "Says it's flat-forged carburized steel, likely made by cementation, of a particularly high quality. One point two percent carbon, ninety-eight point eight percent iron," reads Laurel.

Night Marshal blinks. "So...the 'missing' item isn't missing? I'm confused as to what happened here. I'm going to assume...that it was literally gone from teh case when you two came through before."

Hardy looks uneasy at the idea, and Laurel looks between him, Grimm, and Night Marshal. "Not ... that I remember," Laurel admits.

"He probably would," replies Hardy. "He's kind of a military buff, likes to look at the weapony stuff we got here. Not," he sighs, "that there's much of it, but he /does/ like to go on ..."

"Are you sure you don't want to open it up?" asks Laurel nervously. (He's a nervous kind of guy.) "Maybe the thing accidentally broke or something."

"And maybe," adds Hardy, "you might want to talk to the night security supervisor ... ?"

Night Marshal furrows his brow. "Was it here when you came through? Or not?"

Night Marshal says, "Or had you not gotten here?"

Grimm squints at the two security guards. She also looks around at other displays in the area. "Want me to check out the trail of this magic to check it's end? It goes outside and I think toward an alley," she says to Night Marshal.

Laurel is looking a /lot/ more nervous. "I -- I don't know for sure!! I mean, I think so, but I can't tell the exact time of the last pass through this area!!"

"Right around midnight," adds Hardy; it's just about two-thirty AM at this point. "We were due a walk-through in here in another, uh," he checks his PDA, "half an hour -- give the floor enough time to finish drying after the polish."

The two instinctively look at the floor which shows only the faintest of tracks -- six sets, of the two heroes arriving and moving out, and of the four of you returning.

Night Marshal nods slowly. "Memory is notoriously porous. Some things stick. Other things don't, like when you do rote things." He shakes his head and looks around slowly. Super powers always throw a wild card into investigations.

Grimm squints further and leans a little closer. "I think they left something," she points to an object in the display that looks like maybe it doesn't belong in there. Round object, about the size of her littlest fingernail, tucked mostly away between the side and the display floor's lining. "Want me to pluck it out? I ... might even be able to do it without setting off the alarm, but I can't guarantee that, since...I've never tried something like that."

"Cases in here aren't alarmed," says Hardy. "Double-locked quarter-inch plex on a steel base, but only particularly important or valuable items get alarmed in here." He looks around. "There's ... I think maybe ten pieces?" Out of about thirty cases, so cost/benefit was obviously at work.

It occurs to Night Marshal that he actually /does/ have a time frame for the theft -- between the last time these two were through here around midnight, and whatever time the janitors polished the floor. Afterwards, anyone walking through would have left tracks in the wet surface, the way you four have, and though they might have noticed they were doing so, unless they knew ... they might not have known.

Well ... if not theft, then swap, maybe?

Night Marshal looks to the two guards, "Any idea when the janitorial staff came through here to clean the floors?"

"Polish in here from twelve-thirty to one," the two guards say almost simultaneously, then nervously laugh as they glance at each other. "Second wing on the Tuesday/Friday rotation," explains Hardy. He glances nervously at Night Marshal, then Grimm, then says, "Let's, uh, just open it up?" He reaches up to press in on the edge of his badge; Night

Marshal will recognize an older model of wireless mic, the 'TrekStar' version made to try to cash in on the popularity of a series of television shows and movies that slowly fell out of vogue once real aliens started showing up. "Mr. Costello?"

Night Marshal nods, "Alright, let's go ahead and open the case to check on the contents."

Grimm resists temptation and waits for the guards to open it. << You know, if we WERE crooks, these guys would be easy to trick. Think of it. A few scores, and we could be living it up in the French Riviera.>> She isn't actually serious about the life of crime aspect, but considering how people stretch the definition of crime, it IS tempting.

"Go ahead," comes the voice from the other side.

"Uh, couple of heroes here, lookin' into our silent alarm, spotted a gizmo or something. C'n we open case M-L-12?"

There's silence for a moment. "Couple of the cleaners called in, said they heard a shot."

"That was me, sir," says Laurel after lifting his hand and toggling his own mic. "It's, uh ... complicated."

Hardy glances at his leaner partner as if to say, 'This is another fine mess!!'

There's a few moments' more pause, then 'Mr. Costello' says, "Go ahead. I'll send the officers up when they arrive; looks like they're rounding the corner now." Lights and sirens off, of course, as one does to a silent alarm tripping, but it means that unless you want to come face-to-face with the CBPD, you have about six minutes left.

Hardy and Laurel nod at Night Marshal, and go to opposite sides of the case, where they flip through their key rings to find the right keys -- or rather, a pair of keys each, which are detached, mated to each other, then inserted into their respective lock. The locks seem spring-loaded, pushing back against the turning, but not terribly hard; they do require holding on in order to keep them open. The two men lift the top of the case upwards with a hiss of an inhaling gas strut which keeps the lid from closing once it's fully open.

Grimm gestures with an open palm, and dark energy surrounds the small thing and levitates it over to her hand. It hovers above her palm by a few inches, rotating slowly.

That ... may not have been the best choice of retrieval method, but Grimm is fairly certain that the tiny disk she's found is -- was -- the anchor for the alarm-suppressing 'hear no evil' spell. The surviving engravings upon it are /tiny/ but precise, the residual heat from channeling the spell having muddled certain elements of the script. Given some references and a couple of days, though, she could probably reconstruct the spell.

Night Marshal in turn realizes that a sufficiently balanced acrobat and climber with decent toe strength (which, let's face it, most do) could possibly open the case. It's about two, two and a half meters from lock to lock; if an acrobat turned one key-pair, gripped it in their toes to keep it from springing back, then stretched themselves out down the length of the case to insert and turn the other key-pair, they could probably get it done. Night Marshal ... could probably do it, just, given his five-nine height.

Night Marshal looks at the case, "One person could have theoretically opened this, but it wouldn't have been easy. They'd have to use their feet with one lock. But having keys would help immensely." He looks around for other possible points of entry, like a skylight.

"Fae work...and...tech?" Gabrielle looks in closer and frowns. "That kid..." she mutters under his breath. This reminds her a lot of his work. "Maybe leveled up some."

Night Marshal looks to Grimm, "Fae magic?"

Grimm holds it out for Night Marshal to inspect. "Yeah. Someone used Greater Faerie style magic to make this little artifact, but anyone can use it. Not just mages. Seems a lot like a case I was working on with the CBPD." Specifically Evan's burglaries, which she and Carpenter managed to track down to the boy. "I don't think one of the Fae did it, though. They don't enchant things for those who aren't magically inclined, usually. It's not dwarven either. Maybe...hrm. I don't know about Goblin..."

Night Marshal shakes his head, "I'm not sure about them either. So...I know we have limited time here. Is the artifact in there the real deal? Or not? Can we not tell?"

Laurel looks impressed at Night Marshal's statement about the possibility of someone being able to open the torsion-key-locked case on their own. "That'd be one serious gymnast," he says appreciatively. Looking around, though, there are only three points of entry into the room -- the entrance/exits into the rest of the wing, and a regular door discreetly tucked away to one side, undoubtedly leading back into the rest of the metallurgy collection, for swapping things in and out as the displays change. There are a couple other floors above this one, so no skylights in here.

Grimm raises an eyebrow at Night Marshal at the mention of gymnast. << That kid was in the gymnastics class when we talked to him.>>

Hardy looks uncertain about removing the Item In Question. "I, uh, I don't have any gloves," he says, looking sideways down at the plug-type bayonet.