~~ Sniper ~~

He watched. The reticle was fingers, accusatory, hovering as the form of the car moved back and forth, distant and weaving and unique. The small plus sign on his scope spoke volumes, offered thousands of "kill chances", where a snapped shot could take out a tire, take out an engine, a driver, a passenger, luggage. Whatever. A thousand passing moments for him to do what he did best, all of them passed. None of them fulfilled.

Sniper did what he did best. He watched.

The car had barreled through the city in much the same way now as it had earlier. Now headed for the highway, Sniper's confusion began to rise. Earlier, police reports over an old broadband scanner he kept around indicated that a large store of inventory had been stolen from the police department's lockers. The reports didn't say what, or why, or even how, but did give a description of the car. Not the best move on the police's part; it meant that people would only watch for that tell-tale blue sedan. It also meant, if they were offering those details publicly and so quickly, it may be their only lead. That meant the robbers could switch cars, and in doing so, vanish into exhaust pipe smoke clouds.

So Sniper had caught up with one such car, one of a million in this city. They drove erratically, widely, taking corners fast and accelerating whenever they could. That didn't make them robbers; that made them bad drivers. And a confrontation now wouldn't make sense, either way. He needed assurances.

The blue sedan made its way onto the highway. From his perch, he could see it trail off, heading for the first exit up ahead.

No trail of blue and whites. No sirens, even in the distance. With the scanner breaking story and the vehicle still in flight, something wasn't adding up.

He stared down the scope. Shoot first, ask questions later. There was something to be said for that way of thinking.

But the rifle lowered; barrel still cool, clip still full. Round still chambered.

Sniper snarled and glanced up and down the city. Finally he stood and swapped attachments, stowing the gun in favor of his swing-line. It was still a lead -- the only lead -- and he couldn't let them just careen off into oblivion without finding out for sure. One way or the other.

His arm extended towards a nearby building and gave a muted pop. The hook arced outwards, trailing a zip-line, and thunked audibly, even from this distance. He tugged once, then dropped off the edge and swung out.

The way this driver was going through the traffic on the highway, it was hard to keep up. He was weaving through all the lanes, taking wide berths to help navigate through the steady crowd of day's end commuters that were currently jamming the city's main arteries. Sniper was able to keep them in sight, but as he swung from building to building, it became possible that he'd lose them.

The car, finally, took a sharp turn at one of the off ramps, heading quickly in to the city. That meant traffic, which also meant a chance to catch up.

They didn't go terribly far. The car finally came to a stop at a local parking lot, on the ground floor. When it did, the door swung open, and two people stepped quickly out. Both wore white jumpsuits, plastered with smears of what looked like sealant, paint, and putty. The two - one a man, one a woman - popped the trunk of their car open, hefted out two heavy cans of house paint each, and started their way down the street on foot.

The best Sniper could do to catch up was an adjoining parking garage to where they'd stopped by the time they'd parked. It was quiet up here, so no one was around to see him watching them. As they unloaded from their vehicle, however, it gave him ample time to reach them. In the car, they may've been able to outrun him. On foot, they couldn't.

Were they just anxious painters? Workers, late for a shift, or early to get home? Speeders, and nothing more? Was this just a traffic law violation?

While his curiosity was aroused, this was not enough yet for a confrontation. Nothing so far that warranted more than a ticket, or maybe a breathalyzer. And Sniper really wasn't the traffic cop kind of super hero.

From the edge of the garage, Sniper had a good enough view. He scanned the area and made a quick assessment.

The time of day, with the sun dipping below the city’s skyline, made things a bit darker than the day. Long shadows were cast with sharp lines against the dwindling light, giving room to hide, but not free reign as one found at night.

The area was clean and clear, part of the city that was as unremarkable as the brochures could’ve made it seem. It was littered with small shops and diners, people of the middle class strolling up and down the streets. Most had small apartments and homes on the top floor, occupied by equally non-unique folks, most of whom ran these shops and stores. Those that were left walking the streets were popping from store to store; few people meandered the streets, since this part of town seemed to fall asleep when the lights went out. Those handfuls of people that were walking the streets were walking in the same direction as the two painting car drivers.

The parking garages were two of the tallest buildings on the block, both of them private garages designed for shoppers. They weren’t part of a building; they were owned by the city, and generated revenue through skyrocketing costs for daily parking fees.

The two of them walked as they had driven; brisk, weaving, directed. They made their way swiftly down the block, before rounding the corner.

They started to cross the large green path, heading towards the Botanical Gardens. Much of the garden, from the outside, was surrounded by scaffolding. It looked like there were renovations being made to the building.

Between the Garden and the last building Sniper could get to, there was nothing but open grass and a moderate city road. He couldn’t maintain the high ground from here if he wanted to stay close, but he did have a clear line of sight to them should he choose to observe from up high.

Once they were inside, it would take him a few moments to close the distance between them. In that time, the Gardens being the size they were, they could be hard to track down.

Sniper frowned. He had made the investment, now. He'd given up a prime position and most of the day, tracked them this far... And all the swinging? Yeah, he was invested. Losing them now would be a waste, and -- the frown turned to a scowl -- he hated waste.

Determined (now more than ever) not to lose them in the crowded gardens, Sniper made one last swooping descent which brought him down in the narrow alley between a small florist's shop and a deli. He stowed his attachments and poured himself from the shadows to blend easily with the meager trickle of pedestrian traffic. He had to step quickly if he wanted to gain ground on the hasty painters

They moved quickly. The pair of them had just pressed in through the front door of the Botanical Gardens as Sniper was approaching. He had some ground to cover, but his motions were quick enough, darting enough, that parting the crowd had been easy. He was only twenty meters from the door when it finally clicked shut behind them.

A timer.

No tag. See next turn.

~~ The Guardians ~~

Wild Lotus felt her form, and the forms of others, as they came to be around the inside of the Botanical Gardens. At her knowledge of the grounds, it made the most sense for them not to simply appear in the center, surrounded both by those who were there for a visit and / or, potentially, the criminal. Instead, Wild Lotus brought them to be off in one of the side gardens, known more for the teenagers who used it as a make-out hideaway than the assortment of entirely common and unremarkable plants that populated it.

It was later than normal, and the gardens were quiet. The sound of crickets rang and echoed in the air. The scent of spring was everywhere, a warm ambient sensation that hugged them as they looked around.

The Garden was divided into four arms, all of which were centered around a central biodome. They were in the southern arm, itself the size of a large arboretum. Up in the North Western corner were the offices, and in the Nother Eastern corner, the laboratories. The labs were most likely where the pollen spores they'd found had come from, but this was as close as they could get without appearing in the central dome. The Eastern dome was closed for repairs, and the Northern dome was sealed off at this time of night.

Failing that, the Western arm, and the center, were still open to the public. If their suspect happened to be milling about, however unlikely, he or she'd hopefully be in one of those places.

The Labs seemed the most likely place that the team would find the clues they were looking for, considering that they'd found laboratory-quality pollens at the crime scene.

At this time, the lab was dark, bathed only in a few bars of long florescent lights that dimly light those few plants that needed the healing properties of the sun, even when it was absent. The room was long, filled with rows of cold, sterile steel tables. Each was covered in test tubes, microscopes, mortars and pestles, centrifuges, dishes and displays and canisters. There were four tables in all, each of them similar laden with objects of a scientific nature.

At the back were long freezers with glass doors. Inside were thousands of test tubes, each of them marked with white labels and black markers regarding their contents. Most were plant specimens in some manner or another, albeit a few were food additives and colorants. There was a door at the back, leading to the loading docks at the far back of the building. A shipping manifesto hung on the wall, near a pair of empty trolleys.

There was no one else in the lab. Most of the people in the Gardens at this time were likely in the center dome, where the majority of the displays and true beauty of the place could be found. That gave the Guardians, in some measure, free reign.

Paladin looked around at all the various tube samples and thought, Now what?

"The pollen was in footprints," he said. "But the samples are all in these tubes. Where would one be in a position to walk through a pile of genetically engineered pollen?"

"I don't know," WiLo admitted, peering around at the floor to see if she could see any other, similar footprints. "Unless there was an accidental spill. Records of that would be in today's logs, I think. Or maybe the manifests, if it happened during loading or unloading. Maiden, could you check it out and see?"

"Sure thing, boss," Leah replied with a grin at Lotus.

Anna walked around the lab, careful not to touch anything as Leah headed off to look in the logs. She walked to the door to take a closer look at the clipboard that was there, taking note of all of the names that signed in or out of the lab in case any of them looked familiar.

None of the names on the clipboard stood out. They were mostly truckers and drivers who scrawled their names roughly in fast and broad pen strokes, marking themselves as present. One name did catch her eye, if only because it was clearly written. The angles, the way it was recorded, wasn’t like the others. It had flourish, long sloping curls and curves that circled around the letters and formed a complicated, if quite legible, shape. Like an over-practiced autograph.

It read Jason Weller. Still didn’t ring a bell, but Mr. Weller took pride in his signature.

Leah wandered around the lab looking over the work areas. She looked for clipboards, notebooks, loose papers and file drawers that looked like they were for administrative details rather than lab work. Labs, like any other office environment, ran on paperwork. There would be plenty, no doubt. Question was--would any of it be useful to her?

If she couldn't find anything of help on paper, she'd try booting one of the computers. No doubt the system was password protected. Still, odds were that someone here had written down a password in some convenient but out of the way spot. The only way to find out, though, was to try.

Computers didn’t mix well with botanists in this place. The computers themselves had old floppy drives, many of them were brown with use, the letters worn off the keypads more from age and stagnation than use. It seemed that in this place, they put everything on paper, much of it soaked in water or mixtures or science that seemed to seep from all of the tables.

It didn’t take long, given her knowledge of the office environment as a whole, for Leah to find what she was looking for.

Shipping manifests gave her the best clue. Even the page itself was dusted in a fine, granular green powder. The document spoke of a shipment that had been received damaged. The office manager of the Garden had signed the document, but only after the shipper had indicated the damage on his own copy of the report. The documents were in order, the shipment was expected, but it was the only clue they had so far as to how someone could traipse through pollen. Even out in the Garden itself, it would be impossible to get a pollen-pure footprint like the one they had found; a footprint out there would have to be contaminated with other agents, like dirt or grass.

The shipment in question had been received earlier that afternoon. What hadn’t been damaged remained in the cooler, which was off from the loading bay. The contents were listed as biological matter, relating to plant spores, samples, pollens, and soils designed to prepare the Garden for the “Summer Festival”.

"Score one for the power of bureaucracy!" Leah said. She showed Lotus and Paladin what she'd discovered. "The next thing," she continued, "is to determine who's been here since the shipment was received."

"Good work, my friend," Lotus smiled. Privately, she'd resolved to donate some money to the DBG to update their computer systems and train the staff in their use -- this level of record-keeping was seriously outdated and disgraceful, considering the important work that was done here.

Leah resumed searching through the paperwork for a work schedule, sign-in sheet or the like. There was no guarantee that someone else didn't traipse through, but a list of the people who were known to have been present would give them a starting point.

The list was quite long; the Botanical Gardens always had local reporters and students poking their heads in around this time of year, anxious to catch a glimpse of the preparations for the Summer Festival. The list of names was far too long. Dozens upon dozens of people had been through, most of them in groups.

“How does one walk from this place to Cristophe's apartment and still keep all that pollen on the bottoms of their shoes," WiLo mused, not even really phrasing it as a question. "Answer is, they don't -- pollen is made to disperse. Even walking from this room to a car in the parking lot would be enough to wipe the bottoms of most footwear clean of anything except traces. And yet those prints on the carpet at the crime scene were literally impregnated with pollen.

"So they did not walk," she concluded, turning to Shimmer and Paladin to check her conclusions. "Fly, or teleport, but not walk."

"Or maybe they took one of those magic doors." Anna's tone was light, but even as she considered it she began looking around the offices to see if there was anything hanging or moveable, large enough to hide one of those roughly painted doors that they'd seen in the apartment.

There was little in the way of mobile fixtures that could’ve concealed something the size of what they’d seen at the apartment. Most of the room was bathed in a sterile metal wash, which meant any colour, any paint, would’ve stood out sorely against the backdrop grey canvas. None seemed evident.

What little was moveable concealed no secrets.

"That would definitely be reasonable, considering," WiLo nodded. A blade from one of the office's hanging spider plants reached out to capture a lock of her hair; absently, with the same gesture she'd use to tuck her own hair behind her ear, she de-tangled it and pulled her head free, long gloved fingers stroking the variegated blade lovingly before she let it go. "I don't see any footprints or other tracks here, so I suppose looking for one of those doors would be the next best bet."

"Or maybe the perp brought some pollen with him and painted the footprints on purpose," Paladin added. "Or maybe the perp is made of pollen and leaves his own footprints." He shrugged. "It all supposition. We need more information."

No tag. See next turn.

Summary: