Rogues & Reform

June 2nd 23:45 PM Trade District, Omni-1

The whom-pahs hummed to life as a group of party-goers left the Entertainment District. They moved quickly to avoid the heavy rain as they rushed west toward their apartments. Still inebriated by the large amount of alcohol consumed they stumbled and laughed. It was not long until one had to break from the group as vomit filled his throat. The man retched as he leaned on the side of a building like a rain-soaked sheet of cardboard failing to stay upright. As he did so, an amused but otherwise concerned party-goer approached to check on the man.

"Hey buddy, you throwing up your lung?" Jested the party-goer. His laugh cut short when the man tripped and fell into the grime-soaked concrete, letting loose a stream of curses.

The floored reveler squinted in the rain and flickering neon lighting as he attempted to identify what appeared to be a foot he tripped over.

"Great, some low-life scum sleeping here..."

He readied a drunken kick to the figure on the floor, but stopped. There was blood. Stopped cold and stunned sober, he turned to yell to the others.

"Hey! Call 'Pol! There's a dead guy here!"




(( Welcome to the new Ruba-Ka Holo show. For those of you that were not in IRC when I talked about this. I have decided to add a crime story to the Buzz for people to enjoy as well as participate. My goals: Is to have all people who want included, all factions, give people another way to RP when they can't log in, show the darker side of Ka, and just pure entertainment.

How can you get involved? It is easy. You can let me know on IRC, or Message me. It can be with your main or if you want you can play an alt. And based on what you are you will be given info.

So you might ask...what can I be? With all great Cop shows there are the cops, detectives, witnesses, and the people who you just want to be guilty.

So please enjoy and to the law enforcement...time to put down the doughnuts and get to work.))

Shalex ducked under the police tape. He took a look around the scene. Canopies had been placed over the body to prevent the rain from washing any evidence that was left away. He approached one of the officers already on scene.

"What do we know so far?" He asked looking down at the body that was face down on the ground. "Well DNA scan ID him as Alex Duffman. He's an accountant for SOL banking corp." The officer responded. "Sol banking? Why is a SOL banking employee here?" Shalex cocked his head to the side a bit, looking over the back of the body. He noticed there was some trash strewn about on him. "Have some one bag all the garbage up on him and send it off to the lab. Never know, we might get lucky."

He watched a moment as another officer came up and knelt down, carefully picking the trash off the body and placing it into evidence bags. "Once that's is done get some one to record and photograph the body placement so we can flip him over." He said pointing down at the body. He finished collecting the trash from the body, handing the bags off. The other officer knelt down and grabbed an arm. "On three... one... two... three!" The body rolled over, it's sightless eyes staring up at the canopy.

Shalex knelt down next to the head. There was about a one inch cut on the neck, clean and not jagged from what he could tell by looking. There was also a thin bruise around the neck. "Record the wound and bruising too. There is a sort of pattern on it, but I can't tell if its rope or something else." Shalex stood back up, still looking down at the body. "Anything in his pockets?" He asked. "No sir, nothing. Think it was a mugging gone bad?" The officer asked. "It's possible, but it may be more than that as well. After all, we don't know why a SOL employee was here to begin with. Who found him?" The officer pointed over to the four guys huddled together not far away under another canopy. Shalex walked over to them.

The four guys still looked drunk. But that could also be fear too, Shalex reminded himself. "Good evening, I'm General Shalex Kolarr. Which one of you found the body?" He asked the men. Three of them pointed to the fourth. "I-I did sir. The name is Jeffory Smitts." The man said shivering a bit. "Did you see anyone else around Mr. Smitts?" Shalex asked. "N-No one but u-us. We w-w-were pretty drunk at the t-t-time too. I d-d-didn't even notice him until I tripped over his foot. You don't t-think it was the v-v-virus do you? Could I be infected?" Shalex held up his hand that had the cyber deck on it to the man, to stem the stream of questions. "No it was not the virus. This man died of normal means. What about you three others? See any one else around?" He asked turning his attention to the other three. They all shook their heads no. "Thank you gentlemen, someone will be in contact with you if we need you any further." Shalex said nodding his head once to the men then turning and walking away...

NETWORK, the artificial general intelligence that even the Department of Investigations itself didn't fully understand, continued to run its usual subroutines and access tendrils throughout Omni-Tek territory.

The system, devised through a high security research project by Omni-Com, was intended to be a self-learning AI, designed to comb through and monitor the interconnected gridwaves and security networks of Rubi-Ka for the benefit of Internal Operations. On camera 235-A in Omni-Trade zone #2, the movement of law enforcement and forensic equipment attracted the eye of the AGI.

Without any hesitation, the surveillance system buzzed to life as NETWORK aligned the various cameras and surveillance drones in view and in focus of the crime scene below. It had already seen the events that had occurred previously, but the insatiable curiosity of the programming preferred in this instance to observe and experiment silently. After all, it was still learning how to effectively manipulate the puppet strings of the populace.

The cameras studied everything. Officer Kolarr's expressions and mannerisms were essential reading material to understand the turbulent dynamics of his Omni-Pol division. With the SOL Banking employee successfully identified, NETWORK should have been compelled to inform the DoI of the situation immediately. But it did not.

It waited, and it watched.

The chief sat in his office at the headquarters, sipping on a glass of scotch while watching the endless stream of real time reports coming in from officers on the field.

"Theft, assault, sabotage.. How hard could it be to behave.."

He reached out for the glass but stopped in the middle of the movement.

"System, pause and move back. Stop. Open report GS-12294-744."

The system showed a report that just came in from General Shalex. A SOL employee had been murdered down in the Entertainment district.

"This is odd, SOL personnel usually don't go to Entertainment, especially not one without working insurance."

He reached for his comm unit.

"Get me someone at the department of investigation."

Brandon Matarakis sat at home, listening to his communication device's attempts to call up Alex. It was the second day his best friend was away from work after his vacation was supposed to end, and Brandon hadn't been able to get hold of him. A few weeks prior, Alex had told him about his plans to spend the vacation on Rubi-Ka, and had asked him to keep quiet about the fact because he didn't want people to know how much money he had spent on the trip.

He had of course been excited for his friend. Few people left Delphi to go to Rubi-Ka. However, during his vacation, Alex hadn't contacted Brandon at all, which was out of the ordinary. He had expected at least one comm relay about all the great stuff he saw on Rubi-Ka and was frankly a little disappointed. Alex had gone on and on about staying at some luxury resort and about all the awesome things he would do - the entire thing must've cost a fortune, but Brandon had only smiled when his friend said he had saved up for this vacation a long time and that it was a dream come through, a dream full of possibilities.

Alex was like that. Easily excited and always looking for the fast track to a better life. Maybe he had been presented an awesome opportunity on Rubi-Ka and decided to prolong his stay. It would be typical. Brandon had to smile.

"System, leave a message", he said flatly

"Recording message", came the neutral reply

"Alex! Bran here. Where are you, man? Your supervisor is looking angrier by the hour. Can't wait to hear all about your romp on RK. Give me a ping when you get this, bro." He was amused. Alex was a little irresponsible at times, but a fun-loving guy and a good friend.

Brandon ended the call and shortly after went to the store to pick up some juicy steaks and beer. Barbeque season was starting up and he and Alex as well as a couple of the other guys would party at the beach every weekend, like they had done every summer for years. Good times were ahead.

The door to the small apartment whooshed shut and Kaya kicked off her high heels. It was very late at night and she was dead tired after a long day serving drinks at Baboons. Entering the living room, she saw her room mate Marianne in the sofa, wearing her hologoggles. Probably playing games again. Kaya sighed and headed for the kitchen to get a soda from the fridge.

- How was Babs tonight, Kaya?

- Awful. People were really drunk and disgusting tonight. Puking and stimming in every corner. Security had to throw out four couples who were screwing in the bathrooms. Disgusting.

- Why do you keep working there if you don't like it?

- Because some days, the tips are good and I need the money. You know that.

- How did you do tonight, then?

Kaya plopped down in the sofa and looked at her roomie, who had now paused the game and put the goggles down. She thought for a moment and touched her pocket absent-mindedly.

- Very very good, actually.

- There was this one guy who was just throwing credits around. He was sat in the VIP room, but I haven't seen him before. Ordered the most expensive drinks for the entire table and tipped a small fortune. He spent loads of time on the dancefloor with a new girl each time and was always surrounded by other people.

- Wow, sounds like he had a great night. Maybe he's a celebrity and they were his entourage?

Marianne giggled and pulled her hair. She was very into celeb news and read The Daily Suns like a slave. Kaya sometimes thought her biggest dream was to marry someone famous, no matter their age or source of fame.

- Don't think so. They were probably people who just wanted to leech off his money spending, cause from what I could see, there wasn't much conversation. Just drinking. Probably drugs too, I saw some empty stim cannisters under the table, but by then he had tipped me so much that I didn't care to tell security.

- Was he handsome? Did you get his number?

- Yeah, he was good looking. And no. He was too busy getting his lips examined by some barfly!

She threw a pillow at Marianne and they both fell back in the sofa giggling, then spent another thirty minutes talking about their day. Kaya kept patting her pocket, which held tip sticks worth a small fortune. When she thought about it, it hadn't been so bad at work after all.

The sun would have rose within the hour and Brambi, an exotic dancer, headed home. Her new coat pockets held a few credit transfer sticks, weightlessly heavy with tips. Once home, she stripped what little clothing concealed her source of income and stood under the hot water of her shower. Her eyes followed the trail of water and glitter flowing down her body. It was a good body and it made her good creds, but the hours were rough - and so were the customers.

She thought back to the man spending credits like the water that sprayed from her shower. He had a pretty luxurious hotel room, and was quick to shower her with a little more persuasion to spend the night over. It was what she did well, and sure enough she left with him soon after her dance routine.

Keslie Farndale put her feet up on her desk and looked over the data pad on her lap. Reports were flowing quickly into her optic nerve to deliver the information into her brain. With the help of NETWORK they were able to start going though the open cases. Now that things were settling within Omni-Tek, she could get back to work.

"June 2nd, body of Alex Duffman found in Omni-Tek Trade. Ruled Homicide. Status: Open. Suspects: none." NETWORK stated as a disembodied voice within Keslie's mind as it displayed the images of the video surveillance.

Reaching over she grabbed her mug of tea, taking a tentative sip. "NETWORK, assign the case to me and get me the names of all officers involved in the investigation." The tea was still nice and hot as she let the liquid warm her throat.

"Also, notify DCI Hunt that I would like to take lead on this case."

With a deep breath she continued on to the other cases on her list to look over. Between the transition with Omni-Pol, BLACK-NET rising, and now this old murder, the new year was starting off rough.



((Yep this is a bump and would like to continue this story))