whitechapelmod | TEST DRIVE

TEST DRIVE MEME

OPTION A

With the cooling weather came the changing of the leaves, the lighting of candles and the advertisements in all the shops and bulletin boards for the Annual Whitechapel Road Fall Festival. Overnight your quaint little neighborhood has been transformed from a typical Victorian-esque scene to well, a typical fall festival scene. Strings of lights have been wound between the lamps, scarecrows have been put up in shop windows that hold signs with arrows on them, directing you down the main street toward the park.

In the park, you'll find a small carnival. No big gaudy rides, of course, but booths set up by local businesses where they sell items from their shops. Games like bobbing for apples and pin the nose on the scarecrow have been scattered in the places between the face painting booths and cotton candy vendors. There's also booth offering food and drink-- and doesn't that cider just smell wonderful? Of course, they have hot chocolate too, if cider's not your thing.

Mingle and enjoy your night! But be careful-- you might just end up in the dunking tank..

OPTION B

You wake late in the morning to a strange chill in the air. The weather, sure, but also something else, something wrong in the energy. Maybe you've never been much of a person who believes in that sort of stuff-- energy, vibes, whatever-- so you brush it off and go about your day. It's not until you're out and about that you really start to notice something. The streets are mostly empty, the shops closed down. A cold wind blows through and makes you shiver as you turn down the street toward the Town Board. The papers flutter in the wind, but it doesn't matter, you're not reading them, you're reading the message written in red over all of them.

YOU WILL ALL BE PUNISHED.

Is that blood it's written in, or paint? It's hard to tell, but the color seeps into the fliers and advertisements-- "puppies, free to a good home" or "half off on all clothing TODAY ONLY"-- staining them, ruining them. You know without even turning and walking the extra block that something very bad has happened. Yellow tape surrounds the board, you just notice, and blocks the entrance to a nearby alleyway. An officer stands guard, but he looks pale and shaken. This isn't the first. Just last week, someone was killed too. The boy who delivered the milk. Eddie. Throat slashed and a message written in blood on the wall above him, similar to this one.

An ambulance arrives but you stay where you are, watching as more officers emerge from the alley, carrying something on a stretcher. Someone, you realize, because what else do they carry on stretchers? A shock of red, curly hair pokes out from the top and you think of the girl who runs the register in the bakery, a waitress from the cafe you tried last week, your sister back home who will (hopefully) never end up here. Could this really happen here? Some maniac killing people because they think you need to be punished? It's wrong, it's confusing, and it's terrifying, isn't it?

Make a top-level comment below, with whichever option you'd like in the subject, and maybe a little starter. Please also feel free to disregard the options and choose your own adventure! Below are links to the setting and premise, so feel free to use those as reference in guiding your post. Tag around and have fun!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Inspector Fields made his way along the alley, searching the ground for any clues that might suggest who else had been here, apart from the girl.

He made it about half a metre before he realized another man was approaching, doing the same thing he was.

"You don't look like the local police," he comments.

Sherlock is just about to slip his way passed the yellow tape when someone addresses him. Damn. Drawing attention to himself wasn't exactly the purpose of this particular trip. The less people noticed the better, though he hadn't the current resources to adopt disguises just yet. Either way, once he takes a glances toward this man he doesn't immediately dismiss him.

He's sharply dressed; suggests well to-do status. There's a proper stature to him. The eyes of a very determined man, and quite possibly very intelligent. If he's right (which he always is), that means he won't have to use the skull he's hoisted as a sounding board for his deductions after all. Sherlock could use the company, regardless of his less than legal way of going about getting information on the string of murders.

"Consulting Detective, as it were." He shifts, glancing back toward the scene to see how many of the men have cleared out and to make absolutely certain they aren't going to clean up the blood left behind. "You don't seem like the spectating type. What would you make of the scene besides the obvious?" It's a test question really. He's curious to know the man's ability to observe rather than just see.

"Besides the obvious? There's the question of what brought her into the alley to start with. There are no marks on the ground to suggest she was dragged. Was she carried or did she walk? If she walked, she likely knew her attacker. It's worth looking at the people she interacted with on a daily basis."

Ah, so he's keeping up. "Carried would suggest that someone would have seen her being taken. There would be a report by the local citizens if she were known to be ill that night, or if she'd been taken by someone. So; walked." That's the easy part, if he's got enough from the crime scene at least. "As for knowing her attacker, I'd assume this person frequents the bakery. It may be easier to just check their order lists for names that pop up more than once. The milk delivery boy doesn't necessarily fit the pattern. He's seen by everyone, and he theoretically knows everyone. Their addresses, their names, their---oh. Now that's clever."

He pauses, bringing his hands up together in a position oddly reminiscent of prayer but this is merely a method of thinking for him. "He knew their profession. He knew too much about them, possibly." Why not punish an unsuspecting victim for getting too close? Sherlock's seen the method before. No loose ends, as it were. "But why? What would the boy have seen that was so revealing when all he does is deliver milk?"

Sooner or later this man's going to get the impression that Sherlock is just a little too invested in this murder streak for the wrong reasons. The puzzles sate his mind from boredom. If he saves more lives along the way, then it's merely a bonus to his work. Though, that's not entirely true. He does care no matter how little he shows it.

Fields frowned. He was generally good at keeping up with reasoning, but he feels like there was a deductive leap he missed.

"Who's 'them'? I mean, his delivery route would certainly have taken him all over town, but what could he have seen? And why would they kill the girl over it?"

"There isn't a 'them', at at least there's no evidence suggesting that just yet. 'They' and 'them' can be used as gender neutral substitutes for 'he' and 'she', but this is hardly time for a grammar lesson." Sherlock rolls his eyes. "What he saw is irrelevant. The idea is that whatever he did see got him killed."

"What he saw is relevant if we're to determine who had the motive to kill him," Fields argued.

Edited 2013-11-28 19:12 (UTC)

"The closest we'll get to that is figuring out how far along in his delivery route he got, and if he takes the same path every time. That will eliminate quite a few people, but if the killer murdered him for simply being present nothing will stop the killer for harming potential witnesses. And unless those witnesses are already being threatened not to speak. . .then no one saw the boy die. His body was discovered quite in the same fashion this woman's just was." It's different circumstances for different crimes, but they bodies were left in their places. The question becomes if that was on purpose or due to convenience.

"Do you think they saw the same thing?" Fields asked.

"Not sure. There's not enough data." Truthfully, there isn't. Not with the way the crime scenes have already been tampered with. "Though it isn't likely. The boy turned up dead; no message. The woman was left after the murderer left a message. This may have been preplanned while the other was merely to cover up tracks or practice."

"A killer with so little of a moral compass that he would take an additional life in order to practice for taking the life he wishes to end is a frightening thought."

"Hm, yes. That's why I'm leaning toward the other assumption; the boy saw something he shouldn't have." No need to think there may be another Jim Moriarty running around. Though these killings lack his style and nearly untraceable trademarks.

"It would still seem our killer has a great many tracks to cover. Where shall we start looking for them, then?" Fields asks.

"Possibly where the boy was murdered. There may still be some clues lying around that haven't been trampled over by the local police force."

"Then let's head in that direction, shall we?" He makes a sweeping gesture for Sherlock to lead the way.

TEST DRIVE

Modern Detective meet Victorian Detective

Awww yiss. This should be fun.

\o/

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