It was mid-evening when she had finally left her domicile, as Kasumi navigated the controlled chaos of New York's bus network. She took her time, pacing herself, not making any indication of her nerves, as she disembarked on the last stop in her mapped bus chain and set off down the sidewalk. The hustle and bustle of rush hour thrummed around her, as she slipped through the crowds of mostly home-goers with practiced ease. She was merely another face in the crowd, hands in her pockets and long coat tugged tight against her frame against the northern evening temperature drop.
The police station was not more than a block from her position now, and her unhurried pace and far from direct route had combined to leave the hour hanging heavy over the 5 o' clock mark in the afternoon. The colors of the sky were starting to shift away from blue, and Kasumi knew nightfall would be swifter to come than many might expect, the looming forest of skyscrapers darkening the streets sooner than later with every degree of elevation the sun relinquished.
Which suited her just fine.
She mentally ear-marked the direction of the police station, as she entered a relatively nearby alley that was nonetheless out of sight of the precinct.
Spectral, golden fingers crept from her skin to touch the alley wall, as she leaned back against it casually, hands in her pockets. On que, her muddled awareness of the life the constantly swarmed and clustered around her sharpened, as the alley was inspected by a far more focused gaze. Glancing both ways and consulting the negative reading upon her senses again (save for several miniscule signatures that could only belong to rodents or insects), Kasumi smiled slightly, satisfied at the lack of witnesses.
A moment later, the alley was empty, as a small hole in the pavement quickly sealed up, writhing plants slowing and fusing, before morphing back into cold, hard stone.
Hands splayed out before her, encased in gold, Kasumi strode forward steadily without a moment's pause, soil, stone and brickwork parting around her with every step. Golden light rippled from her body into her surroundings, which obediently shuddered and writhed, assuming forms far more pleasant to an environmentalist's eye, growing in shapes according to Kasumi's designs. Sturdy and thick reddish-hued hickory wood formed a massive tunnel, large enough to walk through without ducking. The smell of sap intensified every moment, as Kasumi crafted a titan of a tree, fit to rival the greatest in the world, from the inside out... horizontally. A sturdy structure not dissimilar to a well-supported mineshaft, there was no real concern of a collapse unless some truly egregious force happened to impact from above, and even then, as a creation of her life-force, there was a high chance that force would be nullified entirely anyway.
The plan was simple. Rather than entering the station where just any shmuck could see her, she would create an infiltration and exfiltration route in one simultaneous fell swoop. The life energy she was imbuing into this area should be plenty sufficient to hold until she was ready to leave, and then she could revert all of it, totally erasing any sign of how she'd gotten in... assuming she was noticed entering at all.
Every couple steps, she counted off another meter in her head, subtracting from the distance she would need to walk to reach her destination until she was relatively certain she should be standing right underneath an area just outside the building. Briefly halting, the golden humanoid figure she had long-since come to appreciate -even in spite of the trouble it seemed to draw to her- phased from Kasumi's back and ghosted into the "ceiling" of her tunnel, cautiously poking a finger up above ground.
Pinching her brows, Kasumi focused on the double vision that always resulted from doing this, as she reached for her Stand's senses, holding steady, until a light breeze and grass tickled across its fingertips. Nodding, she had the being slowly, carefully feel around. A pulse of focused life sensing confirmed there were no humanoid life signatures close enough to likely see the Stand's fingers, but it always paid to be doubly sure. Anyone could be a Stand User, after all. Just using herself as an example, she'd never know it if she walked past herself on the road. Recklessly showing off her ability would just get her noticed by people she'd not noticed in return.
As such, it was only after long, painstaking deliberation that she retracted her Stand's fingers and "hefted" its face up, poking an insectoid eye above the surface, flickering its sight around in a search that thankfully proved ultimately fruitless. Kasumi felt a small note of tension ease from her shoulders as her Stand's vision caught sight of the side of a building she'd already burned into her memory, currently looming overhead and casting shadows from the waning height of the sun.
Yatta, I've made it.Step one was complete.
Now began the more delicate part.
She extended her tunnel just that little bit more, just far enough to let her Stand reach the building with its optimal operation range of 2 meters. Laying its hand on the wall, Kasumi's lips pursed tightly at the more focused bloom of bustling life within the building, masses of human-sized life forms churning to and fro. As expected. The forensic police station was bustling at this time of day.
She had good reason to believe that it would make little difference when she decided to infiltrate. The police weren't like some regular business institution; they worked around the clock on multiple shifts to uphold law and order. If anything, given the infamy of the Cobbler at large, the police would only be getting even
more active at night, not less, as they went on the hunt for the perpetrator of such gruesome murders. Therefore, for Kasumi, the only good time to infiltrate would be during the overall shift change from day to night. And while she unfortunately didn't have details on that, she could make a... relatively educated guess. It probably would have been better to target the night-to-day shift, as there would be that extra combination of demoralization that the Cobbler hadn't been caught for another night and relief that the Cobbler's hunting hours were over. But Kasumi had accidentally slept in, and admittedly, she was feeling… impatient to get this done. For her particular plan, time was likely very much of the essence.
All that's to say, of course, that the building was "lively".
She would have to play this carefully.
She narrowed the focus of her life sensing until it encompassed only about a single hallway and waited until the number of life forms within dropped to two to risk sticking her Stand's face through. More specifically, as she had done with the earth before, a single eye. Her Stand peered through the wall and scanned both ways, eying the retreating backs of a pair of officers. Though she couldn't see her target from this position, her Stand did not risk extending further, as she again repeated a mantra she'd come to hold close to her heart:
Anyone could be a Stand user, and any belief to the contrary is arrogance. It's not paranoia if you're a living example.The last thing she needed was to be caught out by a random civilian... much less a police officer with an actual chance of holding her accountable if it came down to it.
Putting thought to action, she carefully maintained that still position, providing minimal line of sight, until opportunity struck: a lone officer with several binders tucked under one arm, talking on a cell phone with the other.
Distracted and alone. Perfect.Another glance both ways to confirm a lack of witnesses, and she acted. Her Stand flashed out, faster than the human eye could see, scraping the edge of her range, as its hands dove across the officer's person intangibly. Two quick pulses of life energy, and the spectral manifestation of will retreated with its prizes, the officer walking away apparently none the wiser. The hallway was empty of crowds now, if only for a moment.
Now or never.Within her Stand's hands wriggled two grubs, which she carefully positioned out of sight of the camera watching this hall. The footage should be too poor to see any fine details, certainly not something as small as a distant insect, as security footage tended to be mediocre quality at best by convenient necessity. Storing high quality footage would use up way more space than reasonable.
Quickly sliding the two grubs across the hall, Kasumi's Stand returned to expanding her tunnel. She took a moment to morph open and then close a small hole, so the two grubs could be funneled down into her hands and then reverted them into the officer's badge and wallet, neither of which she touched with anything but her Stand's hands, as she affixed the badge to the left side of her coat over her heart and slipped the wallet into one back pocket of her jeans, a place she never stuck her hands which should be free of any risk of leaving DNA evidence.
Sending her Stand back up, she peered into the room beyond the wall of the hallway and found herself in what appeared to be a bathroom. A quick check for a lack of men's urinals (and occupants), and she was making a hole to hoist herself out of, using her Stand as footholds and taking care not to touch anything with her hands. Ah, speaking of. She reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew a pair of form-fitting gloves she'd prepared exactly for this purpose, slipping them on and resting secure in the fact that she would no longer be leaving fingerprints if it came down to it.
Now then...She quickly walked a circle around the bathroom's premises, phasing her Stand's vision through the walls until she finally found it.
The elevator.
Smiling victoriously, Kasumi double-checked that her entrance into the bathroom was sealed up properly and then sent her Stand at the room's ceiling. One quick but firm tap and injection of energy, and a new -if smaller- crawl tunnel of tree wood was opening above her. Grunting lightly, Kasumi hefted herself up, accepting her Stand's clasped hands as a boost, pulling herself into the smaller space. Her Stand pulled up behind her once she was fully inside, and the exit reverted to lifeless inertness behind her. She shook off the brief, irrational feeling of claustrophobia, reminding herself that she was in complete control here, as she began to shimmy forward on elbows and knees.
Contrary to what movies might portray, the sort of tunnels one might see in a spy movie infiltration didn't really exist, not anymore anyway. After all, as the movies showed, they'd be massive security risks if they did. Actual ventilation and air conditioning systems were, by contrast, far more compact and less habitable to human life or -indeed- exploration at all. However, that hardly mattered for someone like Kasumi, who could freely morph and fuse her surroundings as she pleased as long as they were sufficiently conjoined. Since her ability to change inanimate objects into living beings basically gave conservation of mass the middle finger, it was trivial for her to simply... "compact" inanimate mass into the form of much smaller plants, thereby creating more space to move. The only thing she had to be careful to do was avoid making her tunnel large enough that it would be exposed to the floors above and below her.
Thus, her infiltration continued apace, creeping quietly through her self-made tunnel and reforming the building behind her. She occasionally was forced to detour around things that looked like they might screw with the building's electricity, loathe to cause a situation worthy of alarm, but otherwise, her progress was steady, punctuated by occasional peeks down through the ceiling with her Stand's vision to ensure she was on the right track.
And before she knew it...
A rumbling vibration was passing what felt like right in front of her face. And as the final barrier peeled away into a mass of wood, she grinned.
The elevator shaft.
I've made it.Not getting complacent, she sent another pulse of life energy down the tunnel, inspecting the reading, as the elevator below came to a stop. Two life signs- No, zero. She could hear the sounds of the elevator opening and feel the passengers disembark, as they disappeared from her focused senses. So, a trip had just concluded? She waited patiently for the life signals to be replaced with new passengers, but as the seconds stretched on, the only thing she felt instead was the rumble of the elevator doors closing again, the lift going silent in wait.
Not wasting a second, Kasumi enveloped her body in her Stand and propelled herself from her hiding place, hands encased in spectral gold clasping hold of the thick cords that suspended the elevator. She began to slide down towards the lift at a pace that would have given her truly legendary "rope" burn if her hands hadn't currently been protected by a being that was completely immune to mundane damage. With a short, solid thump, she landed atop the elevator, knees bending to bleed a little of her momentum. The impact probably wouldn't have broken her legs even if they hadn't also been reinforced supernaturally against such a mundane nuisance as "fall damage", but the precaution didn't hurt to take. It wasn't that long a fall. After all, even with a basement level, the police station wasn't all that tall a building.
Somewhere above, Kasumi heard a clanking rumble, as the elevator suddenly shuddered to life and began to rapidly ascend. Someone has clearly called for it, and she had no interest in being crushed... or going that direction in particular.
Flowing into a crouch, Kasumi wasted no time pulsing life energy into the escape hatch of the lift, rendering it into a mass of vines, which she brushed aside and slipped through, landing inside the elevator, as her entrance sealed up behind her again. Another stomp of a foot encased in gold, and energy rippled into the floor, which peeled away into bark, sending Kasumi into a short plummet. She briefly caught herself on the new hole, dangling above the rest of the shaft, before swinging herself to the side to catch hold of the thick chords trailing down from the bottom of the lift and closing the hole behind her, zipping down at a bit of a more moderate pace, as her Stand-encased hands exerted a bit of a tighter grip.
Gradually sliding down until she reached the lowest level, she finally hopped off and trotted over to the closed doorway, sending her Stand up to send a new pulse of sensory energy through the portal. As expected for this floor, however, the returns she received were few and generally far between.
The rumble of the elevator now descending from above at a worrying pace shook her from her inspection, as she began creating a new tree tunnel underneath the ground of the bottom floor, quickly slipping inside, as the elevator rumbled down into the space she had just vacated.
Huffing and shaking her head in irritation at being rushed in such a manner, Kasumi took a few moments to expand her tunnel again. On the bottom floor of the building this time with nothing below her to be concerned about, she no longer quite had to worry about how large it was and could make something sizable enough to comfortably walk inside. She proceeded to do so without hesitation. It could only make both her search and exfiltration faster in the long run.
@Eviledd1984@j8cobA pulse of life scanning rippled into the hallway above, as the retreating elevator again provided backdrop with the rumbles of its passage. Nodding when she received no returns of note, Kasumi maneuvered herself underground into a position to extend her Stand's face into the area above, glancing about to be met with cold, clinical halls. An acrid, medicinal scent assaulted its senses, accompanied by an unpleasant lingering tang of death.
Yeah, I'm in the right place.The Pathology wing of the Forensic Investigation building yawned above her, as Kasumi settled in for a search, moving as quickly as she dared. She navigated the floor, until she finally located the morgue proper. A scan for life energy, and she could see that three residents currently lingered within the room beyond. Without poking her Stand out to get a visual, she could only guess what was going on, but it looked like she'd be settling in for a stakeout. In the meantime, she'd acquire a better position.
Tunneling underneath and around, Kasumi began forming up a mostly featureless tube of wood that she navigated by using her Stand for footholds, clambering quietly up until she was above the morgue room. She pulsed her life sense again; three returns still. Only now that she had a position humans were infamously inclined not to look at -that is, a higher one, she risked peeking her Stand's eye out from the upper corner of the room located where the door would swing open, partially obstructed behind a security camera it could easily slip behind if any looked that way.
Inside, two forensic officers moved around a slab, where a gruesome sight lay. They were actually about to start an autopsy on the latest victim! What luck! Speaking of which... Kasumi listened with half an ear, as the officers began. Now that she had seen one of the victims with her own eyes, she knew which of the internet's rumors were the ones she should be paying attention to. It was clear now why every victim that was released from police custody so far had been given a closed-casket funeral. This was just...
messy.
The corpse looked to have had a chunk taken out of it. Not like it was carved, ripped or even ground away, but like part of the body had just ceased to exist, an impression that wasn't hurt by the fact that this was all they had actually managed to retrieve of the corpse. It was like one, giant conjoined wound, slightly curved, enough so that it took out roughly half the woman's head, torso and left leg without actually severing either the head at the neck or leg. The remaining flesh seemed sufficient to barely hold on, despite the irregular wound. There was basically no blood, which wasn't surprising. Given they had only found her after an approximated three days, with that sort of monstrous wound, she'd have long since bled out and the blood dried up. The officers noted that the wound didn't appear to be the result of a bladed weapon, but for something this clean... What else could it be but something insanely sharp?
Kasumi's brows furrowed, as the door to the morgue opened, retracting her Stand's sight, mulling over what she'd learned. This was obviously a Stand User. There was essentially no question at this point. Such an irregular wound, nothing else could be responsible... The officer claimed the wound wasn't made by a sharp object, so... could that be true? And if so, what the hell sort of power could cause
this?!
Shaking her head, Kasumi pulsed her life sense again. Four readings, as-
-usual...?
Hold on.She pulsed her sense again. No, that wasn't her imagination. Hadn't she detected three returns
before the third officer entered the room? But the only ones she'd seen before that had been the pair of forensic specialists... and the corpse. A chill crawled up her spine, as Kasumi chanced another flicker of a glance into the room. Three officers -one significantly more... "built" than the other two- filtered into her gaze. The new officer -identified by his comrades as "Jotaro"- was doing something with a small television, and Kasumi stiffened at the machine suddenly going wild, purple tendrils creeping from Jotaro's hand.
Stand User... No, two.
There's someone else hiding in this room.She restrained a swallow at the words that trickled messily from the television, a stream of mostly nonsense that sounded like a grocery list. Only... "help me" and... Stand? The words were spoken from... the woman's perspective somehow... maybe? Was this officer's Stand ability one that let him look into the past? Was his ability actually narrating things the woman had said and/or just using others as a scrying medium? And assuming the former... had this woman been another Stand User? For her to have known that term, that seemed the most likely. Had she been another independent investigator of this case that had met her end in the chase? And what the hell were the rest of those words supposed to mean?!
A new sort of cold chill crept down Kasumi's spine. It was tempered by the fury she nursed even now, but she couldn't help it. This investigation was looking even more dangerous by the moment. With that wound on the corpse and how conjoined it was, Kasumi unfortunately had to posit that -discounting the act that severed her feet, the woman had died in a single blow of monstrous power. Kasumi knew her Stand, put up against another, was hardly very resilient. If that kind of attack was aimed her way, unless she could dodge or be certain her reflection ability would work on it, she'd face the same fate.
But conflicts with the monster behind the murders could wait for later. For now, her immediate issue was being able to find them at all, and to do that, she'd need to overcome this trial first. Before anything else, she needed to obtain that corpse for herself!
However...
Her Stand's eye snapped to the sight of an object clattering to the floor. Jotaro too appeared startled, glancing over his shoulder in brief alarm, before momentarily settling down and reassuring his fellow officers that nothing was wrong. Naturally, this was a blatant lie. Given what she knew, Kasumi was certain that, for a brief moment at least, that had been where the other intruder was hiding. She couldn't be certain they hadn't moved, but Jotaro hadn't seen fit to step over there to feel around... So, they might have just frozen in place and avoided making further disturbances… Or they could be relocating unseen at this very moment.
Kasumi swallowed again with nerves, doing her best to steel herself and not act irrationally. Two Stand Users... this was
far from ideal but not yet a wholesale deal-breaker for her plan. With Jotaro's hackles clearly raised, he was unlikely to leave until the autopsy was entirely finished, not with the risk that an unknown Stand User -assuming he reached the same conclusion as her- was loitering around to potentially steal the evidence away or otherwise meddle with it. There was no telling how far that Stand User's concealment ability went, what areas it covered. Clearly sight was obscured, but they could still cause physical disturbances. They could also be detected by her life sensing. Beyond that, however? A concerning mystery. More concerning still was their unknowable motives. They could be anyone, chasing any goal. It could be as benign as another independent investigator... or as malevolent as a collaborator of the killer... even the killer themselves in the worst case.
Shaking her head lightly, Kasumi calmed herself. She wasn't looking for a fight. In the most ideal circumstance, the autopsy concludes without further incident. The officers leave. Jotaro leaves. The other infiltrator leaves. And then Kasumi could swiftly slip in to snag her prize and exfiltrate. There was no need to act yet, no need to even try to expose the other infiltrator and set them against the Stand User officer as a diversion. All she had to do was exercise patience and hope for the best. She despised relying on good fortune over a rationally stacked deck, but that seemed to be the way the cookie was going to crumble today.
Unwilling to be the first to rock the boat... just yet anyway, Kasumi settled back in preparation for what could very well be a lengthy stakeout. And all the while, she mulled over her options, preparing for the unfortunate potentiality of this devolving into something markedly less civilized.
