Jesse Parsons had a memory like a steel trap. He remembered the turns he’d taken to get here, the people on the streets as he passed, their looks and gazes as he and the flurry of flashing lights chased specters down the streets, the scent of wet dew and worms heavy in the morning air, the streetlights dimming in the newly awake sun. Everything, minor detail or not, passed through little filter before he stored it. It was a gift.

Not an easy one, all the time. Even now, head turned, eyes pinched shut, teeth gritted, he couldn’t push one single sight out of his mind, no matter how he tried. It was like passing a bone willingly through flesh; there were anchors, roots, that kept what he’d seen locked so permanently that he couldn’t release it.

“You alright, Detective?” one of the beat cops asked. It was insulting to Jesse’s pride, somehow, to know that this lowly cop was more comfortable here than he was. Maybe this wasn’t his first scene. Experience went a long way, he’d bet.

“Yeah, yeah, fine.”

Jesse turned back to the sight. The car was crumpled from the top, the entire roof caved in where the body had hit. Red blood and shattered glass had run like lava from the crater, pooling thick and jagged near the popped tires. The man, having fallen nearly fourteen stories to the ground, lay there with his eyes still open, alert, as if he were watching a film. In his hand, fist clenched shut from rigor mortis, was a piece of parchment. Until the coroner arrived, Jesse didn’t dare remove it from his dead grip. He didn’t want to get that close to do it anyway.

Jesse looked up. Clouds had formed, and a light, soft drizzle was falling. Thank God. Water felt good right now.

***** Two Hours, Twenty Four Minutes Later *****

Jesse stood in the hallway while McCallister made the phone call. Jesse hadn’t been for the idea at first, as consultants such as they were difficult to find, impossible to control, and would give the force a bad look. McCallister was all but insistent, though, demanding that they didn’t have the resources necessary to resolve this.

It seemed he may be right. A dead body fourteen stories below. A room defaced, but no signs of break and entry. Just those damnable lines, taunting them.

It didn’t make any sense.

McCallister had insisted they find people to whom something like this might be a bit more logical. More normal.

McCallister’s phone dialed through.

***** Denver, Colorado *****

Rod was barely awake when the Super Friends theme, in all it’s midi glory, started to chime away on his cellphone. At first, the tone wormed its way into his dreams and thoughts, becoming a part of the shapely and incongruous thoughts that harkened the coming morn. Before long, his paint-mix fantasies were drawing shapes of the call he was missing. Four or five rings, and his dreams were all but about the ringing of his phone.

He opened his eyes, and groped for the phone.

“Mmm?”

“Rod? It’s Chuck McCallister. How you doing?”

Chuck McCallister. Chuck. Rod tried to process the name, remember it, put a face to it. It sounded familiar, but names like Chuck or Jack or Scott or Paul always did, it seemed. They were common enough names these days. No, he couldn’t place the name.

“Yeah? Chuck. How are you?” he lied, feigning remembrance.

“I’m alright. Listen, I could use your help with something, if you’ve got some time.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a body, and I was hoping that maybe, you could lend me those supers you’ve got kicking around.”

Rod cursed not being able to place Chuck’s name, but it started to come back to him. The gravel voice, the hint of an accent in there, his vocal mannerisms and twists. Chuck and he had worked professionally together somewhere. They sure weren’t friends, though. Not first-thing-in-the-morning-phonecall friends, most of all. Cop? Yeah, that sounded right. Chuck was a cop. And Chuck had a body?

Rod sat up in bed, and rubbed at his eyes. They felt slippery, moist from the sleep he’d just come from. Everything was blurry in that first-thing-in-the-morning way. Including his mind.

“Sorry, Chuck, I don’t rent supers. Too much paperwork. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The giant ape and crocodiles n’ shit? C’mon, man, that was all over the news.”

“Yeah, those are the Guardians. They’re not rentals, Chuck.”

“Shit, don’t take me so literally. Listen, man, I got a dead body, no signs of forced entry, no evidence except for some weird lines n’ shit. It doesn’t make sense –“

“Sounds like you need a cop, not a super.”

“I’ve got a building full of cops, and none of us can figure this out. I just wanted to ask if you could send some of your guys down here to take a peak. Public relations stunt, if you want to call it that. Good blood between the DPD and the Guardians. That can’t be all bad, right?”

Chuck McCallister. His name had come up on Rod’s phone just now. It wasn’t ‘Unknown Caller’. Chuck had an entry. Chuck McCallister. Yeah, older guy, Denver Police Homicide Detective. Friends with …

“Chuck? The same Chuck that used to work with Frankie D’Angelo in Chicago?”

“Yeah. You know Frankie? Small world.”

“Yeah. Sorry Chuck, this isn’t how it works.”

Rod hung up the phone. His eyes were clear. His mind was clear.

Everything was still blurry.

He looked back at his phone. The list of names on there would’ve rivaled the President’s. A who’s who of power brokers, would be cops and almost criminals, federal agents and federal prisoners, contacts of every make, model, creed and color. Rod kept every phone number he dialed, just in case he ever needed it.

Chuck McCallister’s number was there. Chuck had been a means to an end, shortly, once upon a long-forgotten while.

Anna Disalvo’s number was in there, near the top. He’d called her to offer the job with the Guardians.

Frankie D’Angelo’s number wasn’t far off. He’d called Frankie first. He’d regretted it the minute he had.

Small world, Chuck had said. Chuck wasn’t kidding.

Rod picked his phone up, and pressed dial on Anna’s number. He waited, until finally, she picked up.

“Anna, it’s Rod. Can you do me a favor, and meet me at HQ? I’m going to ask everyone else to come in to, just so you know.”

"Hrmm?" Anna was still struggling to find a way out of her sleep clouded mind when she answered. Sitting up in bed and rubbing her tired eyes. She'd stayed up too late again last night, drinking too much...and... she took a quick look at the room, grateful that at least she'd landed in her own bed for a change. "Sure. What's up? ...and what time? Now?"

Once Rod hung up with Anna, he moved over to the other lines, going one through one across the numbers of the team. Sniper wasn’t answering, which was no huge surprise. Sniper was a very solitary man, and it seemed he sailed under his own power as much as he did the groups. It was easy to respect a man who forged his own path. Singularity Man, he didn’t call intentionally; the kid was still resistant about sharing his identity, and this wasn’t a “capes and masks” caper. It would be easier, somehow, if Singularity Man wasn’t there.

To the rest, he asked the same question he’d asked Anna: can you meet me at HQ?

Leah was in the middle of a firefight when her cell phone rang. She ignored it at first. (Let it go to voicemail,) she thought. She had a combat scene to finish writing this morning--and several thousand additional words after that. Then she recognized the personalized ring tone, the Underdog theme song, which meant it was a call from the Guardians.

She picked up the phone. "Talk to me," she said without preamble. Rod talked. Leah listened. She saved her work on the computer. "How fast do you want us there? ...okay, I'll be there in half an hour."

Leah hung up. She stared at the monitor for a minute, then typed herself a couple of quick notes for when she got back to the story. Saved it again, then signed off. She stood up, grinned to herself in privacy of her rented house and said, "This is a job for...Iron Maiden!" complete with theatrical gestures. "Heh. I crack me up."

Chuck McCallister. Frankie D’Angelo. A dead body.

Rod missed sleeping.

***** Later that Morning *****

Rod Bellar was a suit kind of guy. Always had been, even though he'd never been comfortable in them. For that, then, it did him good to be at the headquarters in a New York Rangers tee shirt, baggy cargo pants and running shoes that were just tied enough to stay on his feet. It was the kind of thing you wore for a jog, or to take out the dog, or to clean up the yard. It felt good, though, to not be gussied up in a monkey suit, for now.

One by one they filtered in. As they did, Rod offered pleasantries, considerations, tea and coffee and the sort of thing any good morning host would offer up. He was scant on details, though, until the last of them arrived. As the pleasantries started to wind down, he saw his chance to bring up the purpose for the call.

"Well," he began, sitting deep into a wicker chair and sipping on his coffee. "I've been asked a favor. I can't say I'm a big fan of the manner by which I was asked, or the conditions under which the favor was presented, but you can't always get what you want.

Point is, I initially rejected it, but I had no right to do so. In retrospect, I lost sight of something that I'd like to remedy. Namely, our purpose. To help."

Rod stood, put his coffee down, and entered administrator mode. Like suits, this didn't fit him well. Or at least, it didn't feel right.

"Denver Police have a homicide on their hands, and they've asked for the Guardians to assist in the investigation. One of the detectives was someone I'd met in the past, and following our recent adventure, he took it upon himself to ask for us to trot out and give the local PD a hand.

I was against the idea at first, like I said. Homicides are right up there, sure, but there is no inclination that this is superhuman in nature, and frankly, the police are better trained investigators than most of you.

That said," he noted, turning back to his coffee. "there are talents and abilities in this room that might be able to augment that investigation. Furthermore, I can't figure they'd ask for our help unless they were really stuck. And it'd be good public relations.

The officers are still on scene, and will be there for a while. If you're interested, let's do this. We'll pack up and head out to the scene immediately, before it gets any more confusing. If not, so be it.

Thoughts?"

"You got that right," Leah said. "I'm no detective. Unless they need to look for clues under really heavy objects I'm not sure how much use I'll be. But as you say, it can't hurt to go show the flag."

"I don't know," countered the modulated voice of the armored figure standing near the windows. Paladin uncrossed his arms and explained, "I'm not happy with setting the precedent. Once word gets out that the Guardians are responding to handle local police cases, the phone won't stop ringing. And who do we say no to then? Which homicides are less important?"

He shook his head. "It's a tough call. I'll go with the flow, but everyone should realize there's a potential downside to this."

Lotus sighed, then shook her head regretfully. "I'm sorry, Rod," she offered, her calm, quiet voice sounding sincerely regretful, "but in addition to the very good points already addressed, this is obviously not our bailiwick. The police detectives train for years to resolve crimes and even if we had the skills I'm quite sure the rank and file are not going to appreciate us doing this. Without something a little more compelling in the way of metahuman involvement to draw us in, I don't think it's going to be appropriate.

"That said, Shimmer going in as a consultant makes sense, given her background in the field, I suppose."

Shimmer had been listening to the others, more than a bit surprised by their reaction. ...but she knew they were different from her, they were the stuff that real heroes were made of. This was exactly the kind of thing that she was good at, she had three files in her room, of missing person cases that she'd been working in her spare time. This is what she did.

"You can count me in. Not to be disrepectful of everyone else's opinion, but I don't have anything else pressing that needs taken care of. It would be one thing if there was a metahuman crisis to deal with, but there's not, it's just another day at the office. And I don't think any detective would be calling on us for help, unless there was a reason to suspect something beyond the ordinary. It's a matter of pride." She rubbed at her eyes again, the dark circles from her late night evident.

Rod nodded. He hadn’t told Anna that, somewhere through the back tracked history of names and contacts, D’Angelo came into play. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d want to hear that right now.

"I'll go too. As I said, I'm not a detective, but I'm willing to go see what--if anything--I can do to help. They asked, so presumably they think we'd be of some use." Leah shrugged. "If not, we can leave."

"As for setting precedents, we could tell them the truth--we were asked to take a look and did as a personal favor to someone. Favors don't last forever and not everyone has Rod on speed dial. Or we could just say we were in the area and stopped to see if we could help. If we can, we do. If not, we leave."

”Everything’s a valid point, which is why I suggested we talk this over. I don’t like the idea of any problem getting our attention, for a number of reasons. There a jurisdictional issue here that’s going to bite us in the ass, I can guarantee that. As consultants, though, it’s not a big deal. Just don’t go pushing the cops around.

Let’s go,” Rod indicated, turning to show the team where they were headed.

***** Later *****

Rod had given them as little input as he’d received on the nature of the crime, the scene, and what they could expect. While he’d been asked to bring the Guardians in, there were few details that really meshed out the request, save that an entire department of Homicide detectives had been stumped thus far by the crime. As such, the lot of them were a little short on information as they arrived on scene.

There were cops and professionals everywhere, a spiderweb of yellow tape, and the perpetual strobe of red and blue lights all about. The nearby roads had been redirected, which took most of the civilians out of the equation. There were still a handful, however, who lived nearby or who took enough of an interest to make the walk. Those now stood well back of the scene, watching with detached interest.

Shimmer and the remainder of the Guardians approached the apartment door with the most attention around it. There were a lot of cops milling about here, more than anywhere else, but few paid much heed as the heroes pressed through. When the arrived at the apartment itself, tape making a temporary door, they were greeted by two men.

Both were opposites of one another. One wore a nice suit, a fine coat, trimmed hair, a pleasant smile, and a youth that made him seem out of place here. The other was an older man, gruff, worn, tired, ragged edges outlined by poor choices in clothing, heavy eyes and a general exhaustion about him. It was he who stepped forward first.

“Detective McCallister. This is Detective Parsons. Shall we?”

McCallister walked through the door. Literally. As if it weren’t there. Parsons, with a raised eyebrow, followed.

Leah glanced at her fellow Guardians. "Well, there's something you don't see every day." She stepped toward the door, one hand outstretched as if walking through a dark room. Her fingers passed through the door, so she stepped through on the heels of the police detectives.

Inside, the two detectives showed off the first feature that made this out of the ordinary. On the inside of the door, painted around the edges in broad, thick red lines, was the a rough outline of the door frame. Over the door handle was red paint, sloughed on thick. As if a child had drawn a picture of a door over the door itself.

“Took us a while to figure that one out. It was an accident, really, but that must be how he got in. I didn’t know when I’d called, but now I’m glad I called. Look.”

"Uh, wait a second," Leah said. "How he got in?" She studied the door and the red paint. "Unless I'm missing something, painting this doorway in red is what makes it possible to walk through the door the way we just did. But it's on the inside of the apartment. If he could get inside to paint it, why would he need to paint it?"

”Good question,” Parsons added. “It’s part of what has us so lost here. We’re operating right now under the assumption that our perpetrator actually got in by some other means, and then did this … work … while he was inside.”

“We think he was invited in,” McCallister added with a shrug. “No forced entry, no blood splatter, and aside from the paint, it’s not like a typical scene, you know? No signs of struggle, save for some scuffing in the carpet under the window.

But if that’s the case, he could’ve probably walked back out the door. Maybe he was just showing off.”

Leah frowned. That didn't add up. But she had no answers so she studied the rest of the apartment.

The rest of the apartment was slathered in red paint. Obscenities, curse words, insults and derogatory remarks framed nearly every available piece of space. They were painted long and fast, in a blood red that was all too real, all too painful to observe. Just reading the words made them feel somehow relevant, true, as if each and every one of them who read the statements were in some part questioning if they were indeed true. Were they too liars? Were they too corporate whores? Slaves? Yes men?

Leah's gaze shifted frequently. She didn't like looking at the graffiti. It made her feel bad. Made her feel...like she'd often felt as a child. Made her feel the way her family had often made her feel, as if she were inadequate, unloved--and unlovable. It was a very unpleasant sensation.

The blood drained from Shimmer's face, as she shut her eyes to close out the assault of red in the room. Even though she could tell it wasn't blood, her stomach churned unpleasantly as she swallowed down the rising bile in her mouth. The familiar flash of her brother's death pervaded her mind as the red trickled through her filters. She tilted her head towards the ground, and once the feelings subsided, opened her eyes again.

Finally, their attention was drawn to the window where, like the door, there was another window painted on top of this one. The window itself was intact, but down below, was a dead body.

More red paint. A crudely drawn window centered around the actual window. And a body lying in the street below though the window was neither open nor broken. He could have been thrown through the open window and the window closed afterward...but that seemed unlikely.

Leah tried the window, leading with her hand again. She stepped through, supporting herself in mid-air with her flight, then tried to come back in the same way.

There was no difficulty. As long as she remained within the confines of the red paint, she was able to drift in and out through the glass as if it weren’t there. Moving through it didn’t even have a sensation to it, as if there was quite literally nothingness in that space.

“I think we know how he fell,” McCallister coolly noted.

The mentalist walked over to the window and looked out at the street beyond. "What do you know of the victim? Did he live alone?"

”Christopher Lumine-Lopez,” McCallister said, his working of the words gruff and tight. Parsons corrected him, noting the man’s first name was actually Christophe.

“Art director for the Denver Art Museum. Lived alone, although some of his coworkers said that was a bit of a transient statement. Manwhore or whatever. Gay, I think.” The way McCallister said it was gruff, almost insulting, as if he were to spit the word Gay out more than speak it. Parsons showed discomfort at that, obviously unsettled at his behind-the-times partner. New ages didn’t allow for that kind of bigotry.

“Guy wasn’t hated, from what we can tell. He got into scuffles and arguments with his bed buddies, his dealers, his employees all thought he was a prick, and he disowned his family. But no death threats, no previous attempts on his life, and he sure as hell didn’t fit the bill for suicide.”

As the detectives filled her in, Anna began walking around the apartment, keeping her eyes off of the walls as much as she could. Looking for any items that seemed out of place that might have been left by the intruder.

The desk drew her eye. The rest of the apartment sat like a backdrop, but the desk was in shambles, a mess. There were papers and parchment scrambled all about. Many of the papers were photographs of paintings, both on display here in Denver and other parts of the world. Most of them had curse words scrawled in the same red paint across them, an obvious protest from the man or woman who’d done this.

There was a note, on three lined paper, there on the table. It didn’t fit with everything else, which – before it had been spilled – was obviously well tucked into folders and duotangs and binders.

The note was obviously not of the office. As she opened it, she saw that much. It was written in red paint. A single, decisive, broken turn of words.

It read, simply:

Christophe. Turn. Jump.

“Mind control?” Parsons asked, having noticed that Anna had seen the note.

Anna made eye contact with Parsons and nodded her head, seeing the humanity in his eyes did something to steady her. "Mind control is a definite possibility. The words have power, it seems, the name a focus of sorts." She was reminded in those moments of the sensations that had washed like mist over her and the rest of the team when they’d first entered. The reality of those painted blood red words, cold, reminding her of her flaws and folleys, as if they’d been written expressly for her. In that moment, she could feel too some weight behind the note, behind ‘Turn’ and ‘Jump’. Yet reading the name seemed to wash it away, as if – unlike the walls – these note words weren’t just for her.

Leaving notes wasn’t something that accidental or quick-decision murderers or killers did. Then again, neither was painting doors and windows. This did seem most logically like a murder scene.

But if so, why had the murderer left the note? The paint was a clue, but the note was a better one. There were good chances that fingerprints, paper analysis or paint analysis would give them some information about their suspect. It seemed sloppy which, despite outward appearances, didn’t fit the bill.

As for the chain of events, McCallister’s rendition seemed most probable. The murderer was invited in, unless he’d painted another portal for himself. If he had, it would have to be on the outside, presumably, which meant they should check adjoining apartments and the remainder of the outside wall. That also meant that, despite some other clue, that this was likely someone the victim knew.

Anna’s mind reminded her of something. Something she’d read on the wall, but hadn’t quite registered. Reading the note, reading Christophe, seemed to cue in her a slight remembrance. Her mind, trying to fill in the details of those derogatory phrases and lines, gave her something else entirely.

She’d read his name in red paint somewhere else. There, on the far wall. It was hidden slightly, but she could make it out. It read:

Christophe. Open the door.

Paladin stood in the back. Being a large armored suit made blending in difficult, but he tried his best to listen and observe and not inject himself into the police activities. Given the functionality available to him, however, it didn't mean he had nothing to do.

First he panned around the room, making sure he had the entire scene captured in the suit's minicam data. Then he swept the room once with each of his visor's off-light optic modes - infrared and ultraviolet - to see if anything unusual was emitting heat or EMS radiation. Lastly, he checked his radar, wondering if the door and the window which were there but not there were really there or not.

The minicam recorded. The optic modes read and reread. There was little heat, little radiation, that he could say was out of place. Most of it was probably from the cellular devices and the sheer number of bodies that had filled this room for so long.

He switched to radar.

Two gaps; one where the door should’ve been, one where the window should’ve been. Based on his radar, there was no door, there was no window. Damned if their eyes didn’t tell them different, though.

Wild Lotus glanced around the interior once, thereafter fighting to keep from wrapping her arms around herself. She was a Guardian, and had a reputation to uphold. Whatever it was, it surely didn't involve feeling cowed by mere words on a wall -- though it didn't miss her notice that Shimmer and Iron Maiden were likewise affected, and probably worse than she herself was.

And not so much as a philodendron or fern in this entire place, of course. A detective pushed by her -- politely enough -- she apologized softly and stood as close to the wall as she could without having to touch that paint. He knew she didn't belong there, and so did she, but as long as she was there she'd try to stay out of the way unless she had something constructive to add or ask. Leah's already asked the only thing I could think of to ask, though...

Without any recourse, and really just marking time until Rod or one of the others said it was time to go, WiLo just looked around the room, not really trained to understand what she was seeing like Shimmer and the other police detectives, but determined to try nonetheless.

The room sent shivers down her spine. It seemed the more she read those words, the more real they became. They meant something with each passing glance, even if she didn’t read them wholly. As Wild Lotus’ eyes passed them, her mind reminded them what they said, and pitched the growing truth of them at her again and again. Not that she had fallen under the belief of those phrases wholly, but she couldn’t help but think, the longer she stayed here, that they were true.

"There is some sort of compulsion in those painted words," WiLo said clearly, forcing herself to resist them. "Paladin, can you sense it, or does your armor protect you? Iron Maiden? Shimmer? Do you know what I'm talking about? Is it in the paint itself? OR is the paint just a vehicle for the power?"

Otherwise, she noted the desk, where Anna now stood, reading the note. The desk was covered.

The floor. Footprints. They were there, sunk into the carpet, but not so obvious that the human eye could see them. Instead, there were slight impressions there, like the hints of footprints, like the mental pictures of the walls her mind was now drawing for her. She focused, and saw more.

Pollen. There was pollen in the floor, and though it was hard to perceive through it, it was there. It was an outline, small. About the size and shape of her own foot. And another print, bigger, flat, broad, heeled heavily. She couldn’t tell where they were really going, or where they’d been, but she could see them there. They were on her left, closer to the door than the window.

Two distinct foot prints. They could've been anyones, really, but it would've been impossible for most anyone else to make them out, they were that feint. Even she could barely have seen them, save for the trim that the pollen drew for her.

She tapped Paladin on the arm and pointed at the location of the footprints. "Can the vision in that suit pick up two disparate footprints there, near the desk? I can see them -- someone walked through pollen and the traces are in the carpet in foot-shaped prints." Walking over to them, she knelt down and indicated their exact location with her hands, giving her teammate the chance to use the suit's optics to pick up more specifics than she could.

Paladin knelt down next to his verdant teammate and focused his visor optics on the area. The image inside zoomed in by a factor of ten, then again, then again, and then again. The particles of pollen were then clearly visible in the rug.

"I see them," he finally answered, "You'd probably track them faster than I could. I'm near full magnification, but now that I know what to look for I'll pick them up easier next time."

His helmet was close enough that he only had to turn his head and her's was right there. "I stopped reading the writing on the walls after a few minutes. Yeah, I feel it, too."

"I knew it wasn't just me," she murmured quietly, flicking him a green-eyed glance of understanding. "I can see how it repressed our teammates too. I just wish I knew if the paint is the source, or the vehicle. Is there any way your suit can determine that?"

Leah levitated a couple of inches above the floor, the better to avoid contaminating the crime scene any more than she had to. She drifted over toward Wild Lotus. "Can you tell what plants the pollen comes from?" she asked. "Or make them blossom enough to tell? Might give us an idea of where they've been."

WiLo shook her head. "Pollen is like plant sperm, my friend. It doesn't bloom on its own, I wish it would. I think I'd feel better with some green to offset all this red," she said, looking up and smiling. "But no, without a microscope, I can't really tell anymore than this -- though I know what to look for now, if any other prints like this remain after we've all tramped around on the carpets."

"Damn," Leah said, "another perfectly good plan smacked down by reality."

"Let me try something," Paladin said almost to himself as he rose to a standing position.

"Is it okay if I touch the paint?" he asked the detectives.

"Go ahead,” Parsons offered.

Paladin walked up to the wall and traced a finger along the edge of a particular thick swath of red. There...it wasn't exactly a finished job, so there were several spots where thick drops of paint had congealed before running down the wall.

He bent his left arm at the elbow and hugged it close to his torso. A small compartment the size of a pack of cigarettes ejected out on a framework from the plating on his upper arm and he slid it free from it's housing to hold it in his hand. With a press on it's sides a cover flipped open revealing several small cylindrical glass tubes.

From the cover his gauntleted fingers deftly removed a thin implement which he used to scrape one of the frozen droplets of paint into a glass cylinder in the unit in his other hand. Then he replaced the tool, closed the cover, slid the unit back into it's housing on his forearm, and let it retract back into his upper arm.

"Photon-induced gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis," he explained casually to the strange looks the detectives were giving him.

"Bless you," Lotus grinned, already feeling a little better now that she knew she could resist the effects. "Is that going to tell you the composition of the paint?"

He nodded. "It will give me a complete chemical analysis of the paint in about five minutes. It should be accurate enough that we can track the brand, or tell us is something extra was added to an ordinary can of semi-gloss."

Watching Paladin gave Leah an idea. After learning that the victim was a director at the Denver Art Museum, the possibility of a mad artist immediately came to mind. 'Mad' in both senses of the word. She drifted over to examine the paint around the window. Leah studied the outline of the window painted there; was it complete? Were there any gaps?

The paint was as complete as one could expect, were the paint job hurried. There were air bubbles, pockets, distinct patterns of brushes and bristles in the wood around the window, but the square was closed. There weren’t any gaps the human eye could perceive, if any at all.

She was willing to bet that there weren't. This looked like magic to her. Not that she knew a damn thing about magic, but.... Leah wondered what would happen if she scraped away some of the paint to break the boundary. Would the effect cease? She was itching to try it and see but held off. The police would probably object.

As Wild Lotus and Paladin studied the carpet, Shimmer walked over to the far side of the room and forced herself to study the wall again. She gestured to the words there, Christophe. Open the door. "It's like the note...a written command." She closed her eyes for a moment, unashamed that she needed to block the visual assault of red.

"Has anyone's mood changed or attitude changed, from exposure to this?" Shimmer looked at Parsons again when she opened her eyes? "...and have you had a chance to check the adjoining apartments for similar red paint, entry points?" She made sure to keep her tone in check, she had a lot of respect for their profession and had no intentions of coming across in a challenging manner.

”Some of our guys were getting uneasy, so we’ve been keeping shifting patrols in here as much as we can. McCallister and I have been here the whole time, maybe a few other guys, but to be honest, I just felt like this was over my head. Kinda why I agreed with McCallister calling you in, to be honest. I didn’t think it was appropriate, but I’m not a good enough cop to figure this out on my own.”

It wasn’t blatant, but there was a disassociation between the way Parsons spoke, and behaved. Shimmer could see it in his body language, which said he was confident, proud and assertive, and his tone, which said he was unsure, meek, and fragile. Parsons may not’ve realized it, but from what she could see, it was obvious he had indeed been affected by the slander on the walls.

McCallister maybe too, but it was hard to tell. His personality was so brash, perhaps his rudeness and aggression were a defense mechanism when he felt down on himself.

"We haven't checked the other rooms, but these "doors" are two ways, and we've checked the rest of the house. Everything else is solid."

"It gives me the creeps," Leah volunteered. "Looking at the hateful words on the walls seems to have a lot more effect than I'd expect--and I don't think it's just the bloody ambiance either."

The paint findings came back steady, readily, and uselessly. This was common, every day oil paint, used most traditionally in artistic painting on canvas and paper mediums. It had been laid on a little thick to keep it on the walls, as it wasn’t quite the same as indoor decorating paint. There were no anomalies in the chemical or molecular composition.

Just paint.

"Just paint," Paladin noted, and then clarified for everyone. "My analysis is complete, and it's just ordinary oil paint like you'd find in an art supply store. Other than the fact that I expected it to be an interior latex paint, there's nothing out of the ordinary about it."

He thought another moment before adding, "It is a lot of artistic paint, though - more than just the usual tube. Maybe checking recent bulk purchases might provide a lead."

Parsons took the cue, and set one of his men about calling the local art shops and any other dealer who would have mass quantities of paint. When they reported back, which only took a few minutes, their findings were inconclusive, but not likely pointing to a suspect.

Most of the shops sold mass quantities, but nothing out of the ordinary. No red flags, as the case may be.

"Paladin? Can that analyzer of yours do pollen too? I can't make it bloom to find out what it is, but maybe your suit's capabilities can give us a clue," WiLo said, kneeling once again by the prints.

Standing next to her, Paladin looked down and found the urge to run his gauntleted hand through her luxuriant tresses staggeringly difficult to resist.

"I think so," he answered in modulated tones. The small analytical module once again popped free of his upper arm and from it he drew a slip of tape similar to a post-it book mark. He pressed it to one of the pollen footprints and set it back into his suit for the scientific magic to start.

She smiled up at him, then arose to wait for the results. "You're very handy to have around, my friend," she said. "Like a Swiss Army Knife, only... bigger." One slotted, playful, green-eyed glance. "And bluer."

The analytical process was much the same. From the outside, little more than muffled whirs and clicks registered as the suit navigated the samples about the analytical suite, letting complicated machines and high-powered electronics far beyond their time have a chance to examine the samples. From the inside, Paladin saw much more of an effect, watching as the results of the tests sprung up in real-time for him to witness. It was like a translation, how these microscopic little samples of green partial life were taken from matter in the smallest degree, to information of the highest magnitude.

Pollen, as Wild Lotus had noted, wasn’t enough to create plant life. But finding it in concentrations still gave clues. This pollen was for a series of different plants, all of them which the computer was registering as flowers. As indexed encyclopedic entries rose up into his display, Paladin noted that they were all blooming flowers, beautiful testaments to nature more likely to be found in a garden than anywhere else. Many of them weren’t native to this part of the world, but they came from many different places. None of them were so exotic to be impossible. A garden seemed logical.

As measurements and specifics rose up for him to read, Paladin caught another small oddity. It may’ve been nothing, but the measurements and specifications of these pollens spores were very uniform, measured out to make them very similar, with little individuality between them. While pollen in its own regard was so common that it was easy to mistake it all as uniform, these similarities extended down to the particulate scientific scope to which he was reading them. They were like clones of pollen, almost, all of them so similar that even his instruments were registering them as the same.

It wasn’t that far a stretch to believe that these weren’t wild pollen; in nature, variety was the spice of life. In a laboratory or controlled environment, however, variety was an uncontrolled aspect. If he had to wager a guess, this wasn’t wild pollen at all. This came from somewhere specific. Somewhere that took as keen an interest to these little particulate potential plants as he just had.

The plants indicated a garden or grotto. The pollen indicated more than just a pedestrian garden.

"Is there anything more to be learned from the scene 'as-is'?" Leah asked. She was standing by the window, half turned to speak to the others. "Because I'm strongly tempted to break the painted on border and see if the effect stops, as I suspect it will. But it's not my crime scene."

McCallister had stepped aside to commune with some of his officers at this moment. That left Parsons to regard Leah as she asked the question. He rubbed at his chin, looking thoughtful and considerate, but the expression in his eyes belied the shame that he’d started to feel. He had the look of a man who’d just been bested by an outsider, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t help but feel that he was out of his league. He was doing his best to hide it, but he was failing.

“We’ve taken a lot of photos of the crime scene, measured it out. Uh, your guy already checked the paint, so I don’t know if there’s much more we’d be able to tell you past what he already did. I guess it would be alright.”

Leah nodded slowly. She hadn't missed the look in Parsons' eyes. She chalked it up to the influence of the grafitti; it was certainly weighing on her mind as well. And Shimmer's comments had confirmed that it wasn't just her imagination. "Okay," she said. "Even if it works, I'm not sure what it'll tell us that would be of any use," she added. "But here goes nothing."

Leah reached out and ran one fingertip across the painted border around the window. She scraped up paint--and a thin layer of wood--under the force of her nail. She waited a moment, looking for any visible change. When none was forthcoming, Leah reached out again cautiously to try to touch the previously intangible surface of the wall.

The results were unremarkable. The wood came off in a short, mushy sliver under her fingernail, moistened and soft from the thick paint that had soaked it mere moments ago. There was no impact on the window; it was as oddly transparent as it had been before, albeit slowly, she could tell the difference between when they’d entered and now; it seemed just a little more solid, a little more real, than it had been when they’d entered.

"Well, that was...unremarkable," Leah said. She began paying attention again to what the others were doing. She wasn't sure if her actions had produced the slight change or if it was just the effect wearing off. She'd have to keep trying it periodically.

"Perhaps Shimmer or Detective McCallister can tell us that I would like for them to tape off where these pollen prints are, at the least."

On their request, one of the officers stood by with tape, to mark out the area. Men with little placards, yellow with black numbers and measurements, stepped near to map out the footprints.

Shimmer walked back over to the desk, doing her best to not look at the writing on the walls. "McCallister, I really think that you and Parsons should take a break. This isn't just graffiti, it holds some sort of residual power. It's probably not lethal...but we don't want anyone else jumping out a window, if you know what I mean."

After Anna was finished speaking with McCallister she went back to the desk to flip through the records there, regarding recent sales, and the photographs of paintings that had the same red graffiti on them. She tried to see if there were any similarities among them, or anything that might have made these particular works of art offensive to the criminal. She also tried to understand the link between the victim and the art work in the photographs.

McCallister snorted, and wandered over to bark at some of the officers who were dusting corners nearby. Parsons, however, seemed thankful for the break, and carefully and quietly saw himself to the door.

The painting pictures that had been so recently effaced didn’t seem all that common, except that they were photos taken in other museums. Documents on Christophe’s desk indicated that, as the curator of the museum, he was brokering a deal to bring together a collection of art from lesser known artists, vamping it as something of a ‘City Artist’ display. He wanted to show off talent that wasn’t necessarily big names, and attract the locals to spend a bit of time with pieces that they wouldn’t necessarily be able to Google or read up on.

Otherwise, they shared no similarities. Even in that, they were loose; some of the paintings that had been photographed and then painted over again were of renowned artists, whom Christophe wanted to bring in, just for the prestige.

The link between Christophe and the artwork seemed evident with his business papers; he wanted to bring these pieces in, to put on display in his museum. Doing so was easier when one simply took photographs, and used that as a canvas by which to make the decisions.

"This is strange," the armored Guardian commented to his vegetative teammate."The pollen appears to be normal, but there's a wide variety of flowering plants from various global locations represented. Not only that, but each species of pollen is an identical match. There's none of the genetic variety you'd expect in pollen even taken from the same plant. It's almost like they were cloned."

He turned to include the detectives in the conversation. "Which means...what? A genetic flora lab?"

"On the order of the Denver Botanical Gardens," Wild Lotus replied. When they turned to look at her, she smiled. "I work with them quite a bit for benefits and fundraisers. They use very carefully controlled pollen - and in vast amounts - to create the plants you see there every year. The two footprints here, large and small, indicate feet which had been someplace where a lot of plants with clone-like pollen are congregated. The DBG seems an obvious conclusion."

"Seems like a place to start, then," Leah observed. She wasn't sure how much it would yield. The footprints could belong to employees there--or to visitors. But it was something.

"One thing I heard mentioned earlier, and no one ever explained, was the piece of paper, or parchment, the victim had in his hand," WiLo said, addressing McCallister politely. "Did it also have red paint on it, Detective? Words, perhaps?"

”Nope”, McCallister chimed in. “Just a smiley face. Drawn in pen. Sorta. It was half smiling, half sad, I guess. The mouth was like a sideways S. I dunno. No paint, no prints from what we can tell. Just a dumb doodle.”

OOC - I'd like to move ahead to the Botanical Gardens soon, so if you have any other questions, or if I've missed something, please let me know. Thanks!

OOC: Leah wants to keep checking the window to see if the intangibility seems to be fading now (and comparing it to the front door as well). Not that it's likely to tell her anything useful, but...inquiring minds want to know. She won't hang around to do this, though, if the rest of the team wants to move on to the Botanical Gardens.

OOC: Doesn't seem any different than the last check. Maybe because it's too gradual an effect for her to really feel, like water that's slowly getting colder. You'll notice the difference overall, but not the small steps that lead you there.