Cowritten by @Tesserach, [@Framining A Moose], Dyelli Beybi

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Amidst the cool, darkened streets of nightime in Munich, Rudeanu held the lantern from his right hand, his other lingering near his side. The man's breath could be seen rising from his lips as the crossed the threshold from where the Munich streetlights glowed warmly into the darkened recesses of the trees that covered Alter Südfriedhof. "Let's see what we find, shall we?" He slowly cast the lantern around, illuminating the darkened forms of trees, monuments and grave markers, his eyes scanning their surroundings, and occasionally sweeping into the treeline and shop or house windows that surrounded the cemetery.

Nicola stuck close to Rudy. She looked jumpy, glancing hurriedly between the shadows, "This place gives me the creeps," she muttered under her breath.

Nelly lingered behind the pair, her palm still pressed flat against her left eye as she held her knife in the other. Her uncovered eye flitted about as they passed by the rows of headstones, nothing of note jumping out of them right away - neither figuratively nor literally.

"Should check the fresher graves," she commented gruffly, before puckering her lips. "See if any of the victims could afford a plot."

"There is a mass grave around here somewhere," Nicola declared, before adding, as if feeling she needed to explain herself, "All the killings in the city recently. They needed to dig one to get the bodies off the street."

Rudy remained quiet, swinging his arm with the lantern dangling from it in slow arcs that set the shadows of gravestones shifting in the light. "Aha, what's this?" He paused eyes fixed on something which he approached. "Aha! Dead meat will bring out the hounds."

He slowly sank onto one knee, lowering his head and lantern until the object of his interest became clear. A pile of shit. "Dog spoor. Note the fur. It means this animal's been hunting prey. Gone feral." His tone was unequivocally triumphant.

"I'll take your word for it," Nicola clearly did not want to be examining dog crap abd kept back a few paces, "Feral dogs are nothing new in the Republic," she added, playing the skeptic for a change, "It's a big step up from eating rats to killing a human though."

"Something killed those people. If we're talking creatures capable of taking an adult human inside Munich, the options I see are a person and dogs. I've yet to read a penny dreadful about some sort of repeat killer eating their victims mind you..." He paused thoughtfully. "I suppose we should contact Tierpark Hellabrunn and see if they've had any animals escape. I hear they're in some financial difficulty."

"Maybe you should taste it, just t'be sure," Nelly responded to the magician, seemingly perturbed by the man's smug satisfaction - and the support his hypothesis had found in the excretive evidence before them. She turned her back to the pair as Rudy examined the dung, peering into the darkness, even uncovering her eye to let her pre-adjusted pupil see what her other eye couldn't. "Somethin' still don't feel right, though...f'its dogs, why're we the first ones to do something about it? Folk like me go missing, I understand, but prostitutes...some've them must've had handlers, no?"

Rudy glanced over his shoulder at Nelly looking unamused, but he said nothing. He stood up instead, dusting his gloved hands together and adjusting his capelet over his shoulders. "Maybe they did. It's worth checking." He said to Nelly, a touch curtly as eyes surveyed the dimly lit windows occasionally visible through the sparsely leaved trees. "Good vantage points up and down the avenue too. Someone might've seen something. Maybe we can even find a room with a view to setup in. In the meantime, I figure we set bait around here." He gestured around the cemetery. "Good confirmation would be if any of the feral dogs we catch turn up with human flesh in their stomachs. Then I'd look at some of those 'handlers'. Or maybe there's something else connecting our victims we're unaware of. We rule those out, then - [i]maybe/i] we can start considering extraordinary possibilities that might actually involve Nachtewache."

Nicola raised an eyebrow in the darkness, "All that means is the dog fed on a body," she said, "People are left dead in the streets all the time. Would that be a surprise? Are we going to start saying everything the Freikorps or the Communists do was the work of dogs now as well?" she proposed before turning to Nelly, "I would assume the reason we know about these disappearances is because they have handlers or friends. But the police have armed thugs shooting up the city to deal with. A repeat killer would be able to operate undisturbed for the most part," she drew her coat about her as she finished, as if the thought made her feel a little colder.

"True, but we work with the evidence we have. Reports of bodies mauled by wild dogs - our mystery was that no dogs were sighted. But here's actual evidence they're here. Until we find bloody footprints, knife wounds or bullet casings there's no reason we should even be considering Freikorps, much less... repeat killers. If it's not dogs, the evidence will point the way." Rudy waived his free hand as though repeat killers were as outlandish an idea as supernatural creatures while picking his steps around the grave markers, taking care not to step on the graves themselves. "I would be curious to know who reported this and how Nachtewache became involved though. So far it looks to me like The Watch is passing mundane occurrences off as supernatural events. Still, as the scots would say, the case is not yet proven."

And they moved off into the darkness.

Helmut Kürten

Helmut was crouched down in front of the woman’s body. Again, feeling terrible that this woman had died in such a horrible manner. He studied her body and noticed various bite marks all over her body. His gloved hand moved over her body but was hovering over her corpse. “Definitely dogs.” He thought, looking her over and assuming she was chased before being overwhelmed. However, the bite marks on her body seemed to be from something with a bigger bite than most large canines.

His hands were starting to move parts of her clothing so he could have a further inspection of her wounds. Looking for any clues that could provide them with a lead. His eyes looked up at the others before going back to the girl. “Poor girl, she tried to run but suffered a broken ankle before being caught. They jumped on top of her and tore into her neck, arms, and crotch.” Moving a bit of her dress to show the bites on her thighs.

“I found something; get over here!!!” He yelled loud enough hoping that the others would be able to hear him.

There was the sound of movement, someone approaching hurriedly through the long grass off the main tracks that people had actually taken the time to maintain, "What are you looking at?" Nicola piped up breathlessly.

There was a pause then, "Sweet Lord and Saviour," she crossed herself in the dark, "Is that a dead person? What a mess... uurgh... I feel slightly ill," She said, burying her nose in her coat as if to block out a foul odour, though in truth the body was not so long dead that it had begun to smell overly.

"Is there anyone here who is qualified to examine it?" she asked, leaving a pause before adding, "Someone should tell the police, and Mister Temple," the Police might not be the most responsive in the current climate, but Temple had had a contact, which Nicola seemed to appreciate, "Possibly tell Mister Temple first as I think he knows the Officer working this case." If, indeed, anyone was working the case...

Nicola looked distressed, worried though, peculiarly, that seemed to have spurred her to try to take control of the situation, while previously she had tended to defer to Rudy. Perhaps this was her way of coping?

Masako Yamamoto

Masako stood up slowly from the body she had crouched over.

“I am a nurse,” she began. Looking at the body again, she squinted in the extra light. She pulled a cigarette out and lit it quickly with one of her matches, drawing a deep puff in before continuing.

“This is bad news,” she added ominously. She put the cigarette back in her mouth and fumbled for a moment, before pulling out a pen from her chatelaine. With it, she crouched down again and gestured with it towards one of the most prominent bites.

“That’s a human bite,” she stated. Pointing towards another, she repeated, “That is too. They’re all human bites. None of these are dog bites.”

Returning to the first bite, she followed the curve of the mark with her pen, and added, “Look at the shape—it’s like a half-moon. It is deepest here,” she continued, pointing to the centre of the arc, “Where the front teeth—the biggest ones—will make contact. If somehow there was a dog with a mouth shaped like this, there would be many deep points, from the sharp teeth. I have stitched up a thousand dog bites, so I know it is definitely not a dog bite.”

She sighed, clearly becoming increasingly frustrated with her explanation.

“あのう...” she murmured for a second, before suddenly taking her cigarette out and biting her free hand hard enough to leave a temporary mark.

“Look!” she exclaimed, holding her bitten hand beside the bite mark she had been examining, “Same shape. Same features. These are human bites—they cannot be anything else.”

Masako withdrew her hand and flicked it for a moment before replacing her cigarette and standing up again.

“I have seen other bites from people before. There were many desperate fighters in Siberia. But I have never seen anything like this. So I will say a human mouth must have done this, but I do not know what kind of person would do this.”

Masako looked around the group with a grim expression and took another deep puff of her cigarette.

Rudy arrived just behind Nicola, impeded somewhat by the kerosene lantern swinging wildly about his wrist, his pistol was already in his hand though he held it up to provide Masako more light even as he craned his neck to see himself. The size and shape of the bite wounds, difficult to make out. "Even in the worst of the Carpathian fighting, men didn't do this to one another. This is worse than dogs." He exclaimed mirthlessly and shook his head before glancing back at Nicola. "See, now evidence has led us to talking about 'repeat' killers."

He paused then, casting his look about the trees, and gravestones as though the killer might still be out there, watching them. Still he was processing all this. "Whoever it is, they keep coming back here to... eat. It's madness, utter madness. My opinion? We hold off reporting the body just yet. Or maybe report to Temple... but leave the body for now. Clear away. It's cold night out tonight. The cold always makes men hungry."

"Set a watch, concealed. Over there." He gestured through the distance, the pistol still grasped in his hand his voice taking on a steely quality Nicola had never heard in his voice before. This was the voice of a man who seemed inclined to shoot another human being this very night. "See if our killer is still hungry." He looked around at some the other veterans present as though looking for confirmation they too would be willing to sacrifice an evening for a potential opportunity to end whoever did this that very night.

"The only previous evidence for dogs was a police officer had dismissed it as that," Nicola replied to Rudy, "And we dont even know if that Officer had seen a body."

Apparently she also didn't hold the police in high regard.

"How many people have guns?" she asked the group, "We have a lot of potential victims, hostages or people who can be shot by accident," she said, then motioned at herself, to be sure the group knew she was including herself in that number, "If you wish to embark on this, those of us who won't be of any use should return to our homes or at the very least the club. And it would be better if we were escorted. I do not want some boy dressed up as a solider taking a shine to me after too much schnapps."

@Dyelli Beybi @enmuni @Tesserach

Helmut Kürten

Helmut wasn’t surprised that humans had taken chunks of this woman. He had seen a lot worse before and during the war. Cannibalism was something he had seen before, especially when times get disparate. When there is no food and no wildlife to hunt, the next best thing would be an enemy soldier or someone unlucky to cross your path. For a moment, the corpse of the woman turned into a dead British soldier. His neck was chewed up, and his head was bashed in thanks to a trench shovel. The soldier’s eyes were open, and his hand moved towards Helmut. His words were lost in a loud gargling of blood. A part of his brain fell out of his head and landed on his uniform.

Helmut shook his head while having his eyes closed shut. Being relieved that the soldier was replaced with the dead woman. His eyes followed Masako’s pen, moving along the wounds. “Do you think multiple people could have done this to her? Or perhaps one person with a lot of time on their hands? I wonder if they had killed and brought the corpses to the graveyard because they think it’s a safe place to eat the bodies."

He looked over at Rudy and Nicola, nodding his head in agreement. “It would be best if those who wanna hunt these bastards stay here so that we can figure out a plan. The others who don’t wanna get their hands dirty can go back and tell Mr.Temple about our findings.” His eyes moved towards the pistol in his hand. It glemed slightly in the light of the moon.

A weary look on the man's face, Rudy seemed to nod at Nicola's suggestion even as he watched Helmut looming over the corpse. "Well. We've an idea what we're dealing with now at least. Nicola has a point though, and I don't mind the walk. It should only take a few minutes."

Theo

The body was a sight. Not in gruesomeness, artillery shells and grenades mad macabre messes of humans. Bit rather in the bites that marred the woman's skin. Her face was pale and eyes wide with terror and death. Theo found he couldn't meet here gaze; instead he lowered his Luger so it hung loosely by his side. As the others crowded around the woman he instead he squatted and lowered his eyes to the grass.

The group's arrival had disturbed the ground and Theo was hardly a tracker. But he was a subject matter on death and the blood that dotted the ground was discernable in the fading gloom of the group's light sources.

Theo took a lantern and swung it lazily over the dirt; the pool of dried blood easy to see but blood had a habit of..... He found what he was looking for.

"Look.." He spoke with a low, cautious voice. Eyeing the edge of darkness just after the circle of light from the lantern. A few speckles of dark dried crimson winded their way into the gloom; growing wider before disappearing deeper into the fading light. "Blood trail. Whatever took a bite from her doesn't stop to wipe off the gore. It leaves that way."

“We couldn't understand because we were too far... and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign... and no memories.”

---

The blood trail was fruitless. It led deeper into the cemetery and stopped.

The stakeout was fruitless. Whomever or whatever was stalking the streets of Munich had the sense to keep away from the place of the brutal killing and the people watching for its' approach. Perhaps it had some sense they were there. Perhaps it was simply chance. It was impossible to tell.

The next day dawned, gloomy and overcast and bitterly cold.

Nicola had gone to see the police the night before and the next morning an officer did appear shortly before Temple, "Another dog attack," he concluded, "How terribly tragic."

He was not in the least bit interested in the clues that Masako had uncovered to suggest the attacker was human. This was, as far as he was concerned, the work of dogs and nothing would dissuade him from this course. There simply was not the time to deal with the case and the dogs were too convenient an excuse.

Temple did not look encouraged by the response, eyeing the man as he left the scene before turning back to the others, "So the body has not been moved?" he queried as he lit a cigarette, taking a long drag before adding, "Tragic... though perhaps we can prevent any more deaths. Does anyone have the expertise to spot if there are any patterns in the reported victims? The Watch has some contacts with the police and you should not encounter any problems with accessing their case files. If we can find a pattern perhaps we can get an inkling as to where, and when, the next attack is likely to be and any outying murders that do not fit the pattern could also tell us something."

Rudy paced back and forth holding his chin in his hands, where a crop of stubble had grown in on his normally clean shaven face, the tiredness under his eyes more pronounced than usual. "Might be worth someone checking the local civil registry office, they might have records the police missed. The cemetery's groundskeeper could be a witness, or a suspect. Could canvas the neighborhood too." Rudy rubbed his temples. "I need sleep though."