Behold A Red Horse - Log 5

[xp_changeling]

Jessica gets her first experience working with X-Force as she helps Wanda follow up on identifying a symbol.



The photos tagged as a priority were forwarded by Artie and Felicia, with circles around a symbol on the armor of the figure standing in the middle of the chaos. He wasn’t particularly distinctive; a young dark-haired man without any real distinguishing features behind his unique red coloured armor. But it bore a symbol that they were able to enhance and clean up to get something relatively sharp from.

Jessica, leaning into the screen of a decrepit laptop, squinted. "You think there's any chance this is a plot gone wrong for publicity by a high school Metallica cover band in South Bend, Indiana?" she asked, without hope - already clicking back to the Google reverse image search.

Wanda laughed and then sighed, sliding over another coffee - black, too much sugar. "Having never been to South Bend, IN, I suppose it could be possible. But knowing luck in general, I know that it is absolutely not possible." Between Jessica's laptop, photos, and various caffeinated drinks, she had filled in the rest of the space with books from their collection and her own. Wanda had one of the photos in her hand for reference as she flipped through the large tome balanced carefully in her lap.

Jessica sighed and took the coffee gratefully. "You having any luck with the history books?" she asked, one hand keeping the keyboard clacking - a key characteristic of a laptop old enough to graduate middle school - as she moved forward with the searches. She switched to another window, this one searching a proprietary database. "Because there is not a lot coming up here."

"These are not history books," Wanda responded absently, finally giving up on the one she'd been working through with a sigh. "Not as much as I had hoped earlier in the day and four cups of coffee before now. I still have quite a few left, though some I just know are going to less than helpful." She looked over. "Have you tried the "dark web"?" The air quotes were clearly heard.

"The - the dark web?" Jessica blinked, then looked pained. "That's, uh, that's not really what I do. I'm just a regular private investigator. Hell, I'm using borrowed database credentials this month. It's surprising what you can find on the regular internet - usually. Not with this bullshit." Her eyebrows creased. "If they aren't history books, what are they?"

This bullshit" made Wanda do a combination of a smile and grimace - that was nothing if not their M.O. "You'd be amazed at the amount of brain breaking nonsense we run across." She waved her hand over the books on the table. "Which honestly these are. Arcane books - as in, the book itself is magical in nature; I recommend not touching the blue one if you enjoy tasting food. Books on the study of the arcane. One incredibly gossipy diary..." Her voice trailed off as she suddenly stood, gently and carefully started to shift books. She was clearly looking for something.

Eventually, she pulled out a slender, green bound book. "Gossipy old magic users just reminded me of this journal." She flipped quickly through the book. "Ah, there it is. An unnamed person was noted as attempting to imitate a symbol by carving it into their chest. Duša, the author, simply mentions that it was, ah, messy. It's not much and it might not even be related..."

"Huh," Jessica said, rolling her chair over so that she could see what Wanda was talking about. Her eyebrows drew together; she didn't know the language, but the pictures were certainly graphic. She took out her phone - the one the mansion had given her, with the much better camera than the cracked-screen almost-burner she'd been using beforehand - and snapped a picture of the pages. "Give me - just a sec."

Rather than going back to the Google image search, though, she pulled up a separate site - a database of old and rare books. She almost never used it, but there had been one or two cases over the years that had required it. She worked for a few minutes, gaze going between the picture on her phone and her computer. "Hey," she said finally, "Do you have any of these?" She turned the computer toward Wanda. It displayed a short list of books, titles Romanized but not in English, most of them with a tag saying, simply, Not in print.

Wanda's breath caught in her throat as she read over the titles. "Not all but several. Hold this for a second!" She pushed the book into Jessica's hands as she jogged out of the room, muttering the titles under her breath.

"Hey, wait - is this the cursed one!? I like tasting things, Wanda!"

When Wanda came back, she was already nose deep in a waterlogged and slightly burned book. "This isn't obviously connected to the other one, at first glance or even the fifth. But there are mentions of branding in the chest, both by knife and fire. This, however, unlike our friend's account, alludes to this being more like a ritual." She grimaced and looked up. "Those kinds of ritual magics are usually reserved for darker magics, such as mass cursings, summonings, binding something very powerful..."

"Oh, that sounds just fucking great." Jess rubbed her face, leaning forward to look, though there was little she could really glean from a book she couldn't even read. "Okay. We have this symbol that shows up on that weird guy on the cameras. Someone in the, the olden days, I guess, tries to imitate it by carving it into their chest - gross, by the way. Then we've got this guy," she gestured at the book, "saying that it's connected to something bigger and worse. Like something organized." She stretched to grab her coffee, but held the mug in the hands, pausing. "Sounds like cult shit to me. You got anything like that over there?"

Wanda stared at the ceiling for a moment, collecting her thoughts. Her eyes drifted back down to the book in her hand, taking in the damage again. "The Google searches are coming up empty as you're trying to find the completed sigil. But what if the self-mutilation mentioned wasn't left in the past? Maybe not as a way of doing whatever they're attempting to do but in homage? Or both, possibly."

Jessica thought for a second, then slid back to her computer, switching between a couple of tabs as she typed. She took a few looks back at the picture she'd taken of Wanda's book, as well as a quick check of the waterlogged one, before focusing on search terms. It took a few minutes of flipping through links - opening case files, dismissing the ones that didn't fit, tiling the ones that did on one side of the screen - but eventually she sat back, brows drawn together, and motioned for Wanda to take a look at her screen.

"I think there's something here. This is an American police database of cases that have gone to trial in the last ten years. I don't have anything international," she added, shrugging one shoulder up. "Not my area. But there are - let's see. Six cases that might fit, all violent crimes. Take a look at the identifying features - here are the pictures. I think this is that symbol. This guy's chest. This one's thigh."

Wanda leaned over her shoulder and scanned the marks on the pictures. "These were taken as part of the intake, I think, an effort to identify gang members. These absolutely look like that symbol or parts of it. It looks like two of them are in the same high security prison together." She glanced down at Jessica. "Inmates love to gossip as much as magical narrators. Any chance there are phone transcripts or other documentation regarding their conversations from the two of these lovely gentlemen floating around?"

Jessica clicked back from the pictures, pulling up the files and running the cross-reference; the old computer whined pathetically at being asked to do yet another thing. But the browser did disgorge a very short list of documents. "This one is from one of Nowak's parole hearings," she said, clicking on one link. "The state was arguing that he was participating in gang activity on the inside, so they submitted the audio and video from the CCTV in the weight room." A transcript in Courier popped up in a new tab, bland and uninteresting. She scrolled, eyes tracking quickly across the screen; she was a surprisingly fast reader. When she stopped, she highlighted a few short lines, leaning to the side so Wanda could see better. "Does that mean anything to you?"

Wanda cursed under her breath and then cursed louder. "Clan Akkaba, very nasty sort, and they worship the 'Son of the Morning Fire'." She looked back at the picture of the man in the armor. "I don't know who he is or what that symbol will ultimately mean for him or us, but it cannot be good. We need to let the others know now."

"Cool, just super normal shit happening." Jess shook her head. "Here, I'm downloading the files - you can send those along with them." She worked quickly now that the parameters were finally established. "Okay, everything should be in your inbox now."

Comments

[xp_spectrum]

Wonderful mixture of Jessica's no-nonsense, no-bullshit attitude and Wanda's "leaping into random places" mindset. There's a new research team in town. :)