socrowdedinhere | (no subject)

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Who: Sam, Noemi, Rick, and Hellboy
What: Something terrible is happening, and Sam ends up with two (of the three) best paranormal investigators on the case to help her out.
Where: Various
When: Late spring 2022

Sam had decided to take Noemi on a little vacation. So long as she keeps Noemi's anchor item, a lovely little paperweight, bundled safely in her backpack, Sam can take her friend to places, and, at a signal, let the spirit of the young lady take control to see things for herself. They're two days into things.

Noemi is in control of Sam's body, enjoying the sights and sounds around her as she chats quietly with Sam in her head (in English! She wants to practice as much as possible!). She's having so much fun, and will cherish the memory forever for sure!

The good feelings don't last, though. A low rumble trembles in the air. No one else seems to notice or react, but Noemi stops, hands coming up to grip her head. Sam will sense the sharp pain Noemi feels just before the girl let's out a blood curdling shriek. This tattooed woman stopping in the middle of everything, hands to her head, screaming at the top of her lungs, has the crowed moving away from her, staring, startled, and unsure of what to do or what the problem is.

(No, no, no, no.) Noemi's voice is full of panic and pain, and plenty of confusion. She doesn't know what's happening, but it hurts! (S-sam....h-help!) The scream stops as her hold on Sam slips, leaving Sam in control of her body once more.

Sam will see Noemi's spirit for the first time outside of a dream. The ethereal image is faint, and will disappear from view quickly, but in that moment she looks like some stuntman in a movie being yanked backwards by a harness. Sam will be able to follow Noemi's aura as it disappears, not into her anchor item, but away through the crowd.

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If the entity is aware she's spotted it, it doesn't seem to care. It will be out of sight by the time Sam is able to turn towards the neighborhood. While she could still see them, Noemi's essence was... pained... scared, weak. No matter where Sam goes throughout the neighborhood, she'll be unable to find a trace of the thing that took her ghost friend.

Sam drove longer than she should've, hoping for some glimpse, some sign, something, even as she knew the odds were slim---at best. Eventually, she pulled over, and marked in her phone exactly where she'd been when Noemi was forced from her...and her anchor. A quick check proved the paperweight was still safe in her bag, as it had been, and apparently unaltered; that was one plus, in the face of such an inexplicable loss.

What the fuck had that been?! Sam didn't know; she had no answers; what she had, instead, was a next step... and a next stop: liquor store. It would've sounded suspect, but she needed a bottle of red wine for ritual reasons. The next step was seeing if she could or couldn't contact someone else who was aware of whatever-it-was and considered it a problem, and to do that, she'd need the wine, four phone books, her own phone, the right room, and a few minutes to do the rite right. The phone books were the biggest problem; she had a stack stashed at home, but it would be a long drive and she didn't want to wait that long. Finding one in-town, and hitting the nearest three until she could snatch up enough? Also a pain in the ass, but more agreeable, since the busywork of gathering components was more tolerable than trying to rush back to Porcupine River without being ticketed. The hotel room itself didn't fit the requirements, but its bathroom did; she could do the phone rite there.

Three hours after deciding her course of action, Sam---tired, worried, frustrated, and not knowing what she should expect---did. The ritual itself was simple, once it was set up; drink the wine, spin the bottle, take numbers from the helpline pages the phonebooks standing in the corners of the corners of the room had been propped open to show, adding her particular problem through the numbers corresponding to the letters: S P I R I T S N A T C H I N G M Y S T E R Y E N T I T Y I N S O U T H Q U E B E C

Rick is pretty seasoned as supernatural things now, and he's recently gotten a call that a town in Quebec is having issues with people just... collapsing. A few are dead, but most are in comas. People who've been nearby when someone has collapsed have commented on thinking they saw some kind of dark entity. Only one person saying it could be passed off as some spiritual nut, but with every witness, separately and unaware of another's experience, also saying they saw some dark shadow, really makes it clear this is likely some kind of supernatural entity at work.

It's his first time out of the USA for a job, but he's gotten all the legal stuff worked out and has been approved to work in Canada. And so he's off to this town in Quebec, to find out what sort of entity is putting people into comas. He's just arriving at his hotel, not far from the affected neighborhood, when he receives a call from an unknown number.

((...take the time to cut thr red tape when people's lives are on the line. Rick would hop in and work out the international details later. XD Also...since I don't have an account for Rick [...yet? XD;;;]))

Rick spent a semester abroad when he was in college, and that was under ten years ago, so his passport's still good. He looked into what it might take to be able to work - well, more pointedly, to accept payment in a professional capacity - in Canada, but that was going to take too long. It sounded like something was taking people down at random left, right, and center, and he wasn't going to waste time getting something he didn't strictly need...since he didn't actually NEED to be paid for his services, when push came to shove. Really, the only reason he charged clients anything was so they felt what they were getting was of a good quality, not just freebie crap.

He usually drove to case locations, but he didn't know what it would take to be able to drive legally in Canada, so he hopped a plane and arranged for a rental car. Said car was now safely parked in the hotel's lot while he dropped his luggage - just an old gym bag, really - on the bed and himself into the chair at the little desk in the corner to start familiarizing himself with the area. Just as he pulled out his tablet, though, his cell phone rang. He looked at it, but the display lacked not only a name but a number, merely conveying 'Caller Unknown.'

"Huh..." Well, no reason not to take it. "Paranormal Files Detective Agency, Rick Rogers speaking. How can I help you?"

"You can hold off on deciding 'I have a crazy lady here,' despite how nuts my problem is probly gonna sound. That's one way, and others, I'm afraid, may take some unpacking. Sam Patchowski, by the way." At this point, introducing herself as 'Lydia Demaire' was waving a red flag, but... Sam felt comfortable offering her actual name. She had no criminal record, and everything she and Noemi had been about was above-board---toolihg around, seeing what there was to see and enjoying each other's company. "I have a haunted item. That's not a problem. That's the opposite of a problem. The ghost attached to it is nice. The problem is something---and I want to know what in the shit it was---fuckin' ripped my ghost off. She was frightened, and in pain, all of a sudden, and then gone. Does that sound like anything you've heard of?"

Under other circumstances, Sam might not have been so blunt---but she might've. Thanks to the rite, she knew her problem was also Rick's problem; she just didn't know how much he knew... or believed.

"...um."

Whatever Rick might have been expecting, it definitely wasn't this. Not that he thought she was crazy - really, he'd heard plenty of "crazy" in his life that was perfectly (if horribly) legit - just that it was kind of a lot to get hit with out of the blue, enough so that it managed to stun him a little. But he shook it off as quickly as it hit. Regardless of the details, it boiled down to Rick Rogers has a case.

Another one. He was already in town - in a foreign country - on a case. Could he take on a second one?

No. That wasn't the right question. The right question was how did he manage to work them both? His life's purpose was to help people, living and dead. Whoever this ghost girl was, she was clearly in trouble.

"No, BUT..." But nothing in particular, just to let him finish speaking before she jumped in again. "First, I don't automatically think you're crazy. Second...just so I know I'm understanding right - you have a haunted object, the ghost tied to it is a friend, and something managed to sever that tie and basically kidnap her?"

Sam turned her phone away from her face, so that the massive sigh of relief she heaved wouldn't be an unpleasant noise right in Rick's ear, but angle it back to answer his question immediately. "You got it. I don't know if the tie is actually severed or just somehow suspended, whether she'll be untethered or what once the thing what went for her is dealt with... but you got it."

And with that, a clue he'd missed the first time around caught his attention. "You saw what took her? What did it look like?"

Was it possible that he didn't have two cases after all?

Sam took a deep breath... and then the plunge. "The bitch of it is the thing didn't have a physical form. Just an aura. But the thing was intelligent, malicious, smug. Bastard. Inhuman. I'd know it if I saw it again, and it either didn't notice or care that I noticed it." If this Rick guy was going to help, he had to have the information she did.

Rick nodded, not that Sam would know it. "Would you describe it as a dark entity?" By his tone, he's not pulling that out of thin air - he clearly has something in mind.

It wasn't a question she'd expected, but Sam didn't miss a beat in answering, "Sure. It's snatched at least one benign spirit up, and its intentions, attitude, whatever you want to say, seem, came off as a mix of gloat and meanness; that ought to qualify. Dark entity, invisible fuckin' skeeve." There was only so okay any given ghost could be, but god she hoped Noemi was alright.

"Gotcha. Okay, I just got into town. I'm at [NAME] Hotel in [TOWN, PROVINCE]. Where are you?"

"Oh, shit." It didn't sound like 'oh, shit,' but 'oh, wow,' a positive development despite Sam's inclination to swear. "I'm in town, too. I'm at Chateau Frontenac---you said you're at the Claredon? That's not far from here. If you want to meet up I can lead you to where it was Noemi got ganked."

((OOC: High francophone population so Noemi could talk to people while walking, lots of stuff to see and do, drive-able for Sam, a comfortable distance from the Quebecois cabal Sam's acquainted with, and there's an Old Quebec City which is always neat. Consider: https://www.quebec-cite.com/en/what-to-do-quebec-city/must-see-attractions ))

"Sounds great. Just give me an address. I'll be there as soon as I can."

“Sure. 1 Rue des Carrières. I'll text it to you---and my own contact information, cause callback won't work—if you give me the number you want it texted to? You can't just say 'this one,' cause it's a whole thing. Like the callback thing.” Being honest about picking up the aura of the thing that had snatched Noemi was one thing, and necessary; detailing the ritual she'd used to contact Rick, Sam had decided, was another: a digression. If everything turned out okay in the end, she'd unpack the rite, and gamely, but until everything was alright, potential delays, distractions included, would be set aside. Even if the worst-case scenario of Noemi being somehow consumed or corrupted wasn't a realistic one, she was scared and suffering, and the thought made Sam's guts churn with frustration, anxiety, and an uncharacteristic impatience.

Rick wasn't wholly sure he followed, but he'd roll with it, and for much the same reason - the whys around contact info took a backseat to the case at hand. So he just rattled off his cell phone number . . . confessing he didn't know if it'd work in Canada to just dial it as-is or if something else needed to be dialed first. His was an American-issued number, and he'd never been to Canada nor knew anyone from the country to know how calling worked. But as he waited for the address, live call still in hand, he busied himself with grabbing just what he figured he'd need for the case. Toiletries, changes of clothing, etc could stay in the room. At least he was checked in and could come and go as he needed now.

Sam assured him her number---and her calling his---would work as usual; dial 1, area code, personal number. "I've bounced back and forth a fair bit, never had an issue. North American Numbering Plan. If you ever have an issue trying to get me over the phone, though, email's giraffitifish@hotmail.com, replacing A with a four, every I with a one, and the S with a five. I'm going to bounce down to the lobby to wait for you, though. See you soon? You'll know me when you see me; tattoos, ratty jeans."

Rick frowned at the email address. "Hey, do me a favor? Text that to me too? Or email me - rick dot rogers at paranormal files - all one word - dot com. And I'm heading out now." She'd hear a door close as he exited into the hallway and headed for the elevators. "Tall, dark, and handsome for me. Leather jacket, navy pullover, blue jeans. I'm sure we'll find each other pretty easily. Okay, I'm at the elevator, so probably no more signal. I'll catch you soon." He'd pause long enough for her to have a last say, then hung up and slipped the phone into his pocket as the elevator doors slid open. He'd head straight for his rental car - red and sporty just like his own - and then to the other hotel. Once in the driver's seat, his phone came back out to serve as a GPS to get him there expediently.

“I'll email you while I'm waiting, might as well send one while you're expecting it.” Rick's description of himself prompted an amused little snort, and he'd hear Sam's smile in her “See you soon.” It wasn't even a real chuckle, but the momentary amusement was a welcome one.

10/10 cliche use. But a jacket over a pullover? It's only spring, sure, but how is he not baking in a bunnyhug and coat? A trivial question, especially in comparison to the long list of very pressing questions (was Noemi going to be okay? What the fuck had snatched her away? Why? Where was it now? Did it have a face to break? How would they find it? How would they get Noemi grabbed away from it? She'd used magic to make the wraithlike Alister-amalgamation solid enough to seize beneath her hands, could she haul Noemi to safety the same way?) but it wasn't like Sam could keep a thought from occurring to her. If she could... she wouldn't. A moment of 'wait, what?' was still a brief break from being worried. That worry would be plain on her face when Rick found her; a woman, his own age or a little older, with pretty features and ink everywhere. Neck down, one elbow up, one elbow out, lots on both legs, if the limited view her torn and run-riddled jeans afforded was an indication. She stood on seeing Rick, certain of him with the flash of what looked like recognition in his aura, and moved to meet him. She had a hitch in her step, present but not terribly pronounced, but walked without wincing.

“Hi.”

The pullover question would be answered as soon as she laid eyes on Rick. Under the open leather jacket, she'd spot what looked like a collarless polo shirt (specifically a type of men's pullover called a henley). The 'tall, dark, and handsome' would prove pretty accurate too. Most would find him quite the looker, with his olive skin (not quite as dark as Darnell's but still), short black hair, and a tall, rail-thin build that would undoubtedly remind her of Connor's.

She'd spot the recognition on his face and in his aura with a side of 'wow, she wasn't kidding,' but he strode up to her without hesitation and offered his hand. "Hey. Rick Rogers, paranormal investigator extraordinaire. You said you're Sam, right?" Pouch-something, Patch-something . . . he hadn't quite caught her last name and wasn't going to embarrass himself or insult her by making any guesses.

“That's right. Sam Patchowski, paranormal instigator, though I didn't start shit today.” It was with some relief and a small smile Sam shook the offered hand firmly. It'd give Rick a chance to note the notes on her hand went right up to the nailbed, while she studied the curious aspects of his aura. There was something up with his hand, and something up with him, and it was in those somethings her relief was rooted; they were signs her had an idea of what he was doing, and, maybe, had some unusual talents to employ. “My friend and I were minding our own business. Let's walk and talk? The lobby probably isn't the place to be as blunt as I'm inclined. In the same vein? Nice to meet you, shame about the circumstances.”

Rick couldn't help but note the first comment as much as the beautiful filigree-like lines of musical notations wrapping her arm from nails to elbow. "Instigator, huh?" That came out with a crooked smile, but he let it drop at that for now as she continued. "Same and same, and yeah, c'mon." Unless she had other plans, he'd head back to his car. "Take me to the place your friend was snatched?"

"To put it politely. We can unpack that when we've got a better time to sit down and talk skillsets, cause I got a feeling you've got an interesting one, too. Undoubtedly beneficial in your line of work, but you bet." Someone else might've felt more misgivings, getting into a car with a near-stranger, but being able to study an aura was an immense boon; the ghost-abducting entity had been a ball of unfriendly intentions, with a smattering of self-satisfaction, but Rick was concerned, interested, maybe hopeful, and... as friendly as he sounded, unless her ability to describe the entity's emotional atmosphere had tipped him off enough to con her very creatively. If the day was going to take a screaming left turn like that, she was probably better prepared than he was... but that 'if' wasn't helpful, and here Rick seemed sincere in his trying to be. "I can't remember the address, exactly, because I was distracted with reeling, but I can 'left, right, straight' you block by block to backtrack."

Rick flashed her a crooked, even charming grin - self-assured at the very least. "I've got a few aces up my sleeve when it comes to the paranormal." It was true that, on the surface, here was a young man possibly 'luring' a young woman into a potentially vulnerable position. But if his aura was anything to go by, this appearance didn't even occur to Rick. In his mind, he was working with a client, and he'd had clients in his car often enough during cases that it was an unconscious matter of course at this point. Even in another country.

Speaking of car, though, it's immediately obvious that this guy is a young man of means, even if the sports car was a rental.

"No problem. Lack of address is fine so long as you can find your way back."

And off they went.

Sam grinned back, nodding acknowledgement of the aces, now pretty sure her new friend was in the mix.

Or, at least, has one foot in the fire.

But then it was back to business, if with another aside: "Nice ride. It might take a few minutes of crusing for me to get my bearings, but if I misdirect us, I can google up the statue we'd been by. To start, though, a left as we're leaving the lot... and after that I'll be watching for something."

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If I've got details wrong on where Rick has been, let me know, I'll edit.

Just that, since he doesn't NEED to be paid for his services, I don't think he'd...

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(Sneaks a tag between dinner n show)

we're in quebec city, bb

Going to bed in a few, promise x,x

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