video; okay kids let's organize this bitch

[thefourteenth]

[Here is Visser One, posting with her own face for the very first time, businesslike and deadly serious. She seems to be posting from some kind of office- whether home or otherwise is impossible to tell. Everything about her has the air of unimpeachable seasoned authority.]

Well, we've all seen the rash of posts about disappearances in the last three days. [She takes a short, impatient breath, drawing herself up a little more.] Come now, we can't possibly think it's just a coincidence. What did that kind of thinking get us with the virus?

Organizing is imperative. We won't accomplish anything by staying scattered and in a panic.

First and foremost, I need you all to come forward here and give the name of anybody who's gone missing this week. So far, I have a list of six names.

[She folds her hands on her desk and leans in, expression intensifying- but still unusually cold. Like a hunter, not an impassioned loved one.]

We will find them. We'll find them, bring them home, then we'll find the offender and give them exactly what they deserve.


(OOC: feel free to threadjack and make a big mess of this post if you want! Visser One just really wants to see some discussion and organization going on, and so do I.)

Comments

[universaljanitor]

[Just like that, it's all back. With that movement, the touch to the arm of the chair, tension practically crackling in the air... it's all coming back. The tension, the anger, the desperation. The sadness and worry and that sense of how unfair it all is.

He closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath and lets it out, counts the beats of his hearts, and turns in his chair to keep track of Edriss' movements, his face hardened up completely again, eyes sharp and narrowed.

The Doctor might be emotional, and this particular one might not be in the most stable of places, still, but he's smart. He's brilliant. He's been through this dance, this game time and time again. He's died ten times over, been played more times than he can count. He's faced off with the Master again and again. Been used and betrayed and tossed aside like a cheap rag by people he called friends.

Edriss knows emotional tells like he knows temporal theory. And it's fascinating.]

... And the others?

[Some goads, dear Visser One, he refuses to give into]

[thefourteenth]

[Her brows furrow into a flicker of a confused frown.]

Followed after I noticed the pattern. Washu was the reason I made the list.

[She raises her eyebrows almost impassively.]

You aren't the only one who's noticed someone missing.

[universaljanitor]

[His expression softens, all signs of tension gone. Hell, even his residual anger is taking a back seat for now, because Edriss just showed the one thing that always gets the Doctor to drop his guard.

Sometimes at the cost of his life.

She showed him compassion.]

Of course not. [He tongues the roof of his mouth for a moment, turning around to face the darkened computer again, fingers twitching for the familiar feel of the sonic in his hand again] When a pattern's disrupted, everyone feels the effects. Like a ripple in a po-

[Pond. He cuts himself off, teeth grit and expression tense] Anyone respond with any leads, yet?

[thefourteenth]

[Her expression hardens similarly, and she walks back around her desk- only to shove her computer aside and sit on the desk itself.]

A worthless little... punk who knows Mary and Lisbeth. He knows roughly when they each disappeared, where they both were, and appears to have some intimate involvement with both of them- but refuses to go to the police.

[So. frustrating.]

[universaljanitor]

[One eyebrow quirks up at the change in her expression, in the tone of her voice, but he says nothing. Simply noting it for later. When things aren't as... serious.

He refuses to think of this situation as dire.]

Well... [He chews out the word, thinking over his next few sentences] In my experience, police... aren't generally the ones you rely on. Not for things like this.

Independent investigation, by people who know a bit more than the general force. That's what actually helps.

[Which, by the way, was what he'd been doing when he'd barged in here in the first place. Thank you very much.]

Can I have my sonic back yet?

[thefourteenth]

No.

[Curt, clipped, and moving on.]

These police have superpowers. Telling them as well as conducting his own investigation would not hurt. He values his distrust more than the lives of those women.

[She laughs drily.]

And they call me the monster for being honest.

[universaljanitor]

[His eyebrows arch up]

He? [But his face is shutting down at the end of that, a look of bitter anger flickering across it before he smooths it out, falls carefully neutral. Blank.] Oh Edriss, there is nothing I value more than the lives of the people I care for.

Police of any kind just charge about, super powers or none. They wave around their guns and bust down doors without knowing what's in there. What could truly be lurking in the dark. They could help, yes, but they can do so much more to hurt the situation.

They could push whoever might have taken them into action. If they get close, if there are kidnappers and they start feeling pressured, cornered, like the police are onto them, they start to get desperate. They get tense, they act out.

I don't trust the police here, yet.

[And more importantly, he can't think of a way to successfully make them trust him. The psychic paper doesn't have a high enough success rate here, they know he's a newcomer. He can't lead or even guide an investigation as he would normally.

He's never felt this stuck before.]

[thefourteenth]

[Edriss' perfectly smooth expression doesn't betray anything inside. It doesn't betray her interest or the fact that, indeed, he just passed a test.

She doesn't trust the police, either.]

You at least offer something more useful than those mafia promises to "do something about it" in "your own way." Foolish little boy.

Tell me, Doctor. [Adjusting her position on the desk, gripping the edge a little differently. Thinking. Thinking uncertainly, at that.] What do you think of what the humans term "magic?"