In the small office there, across the street from the little convienence store, Mai was pouring over a few dozen emails from one of her clients.

The woman, named Gretchen, had been obnoxiously checking in with Mai via her phone, email and even by checking in every so often. Gretchen, interestingly enough, was one of the small handful of people who had still been leftover from an investigation that had started in Georgia for Mai. Gretchen's husband had ran off with a young girl he met on an online video game and instead of just take that for what it was, well, Mrs. Martin just wouldn't let it go. She constantly harassed the servers that contained Mai's email with requests for further inquiry into the matter because, gasp, there were always new developments.

Everyone thought they were a detective, right? So, well, why try to hire one? Why waste your money?

The email had started tonight, much like the others: "So, I had a thought." and then it trailed off into insanity usually regarding a bill that was found that proved that, not only was Mr. Martin rather well but that he was still using the savings fund in both his and his wife's name. This proved nothing. Nothing devious other than a grown man using his pension to go put his dick in another, much younger and possibly more reasonable, person.

Mai had just slapped the laptop shut when another email had dinged through as she was doing so. Sighing, she opened it up, put in her password and glanced over it. Nothing out of the ordinary but it was enough that a few things had to be looked into, information had to be relayed and by the time she had finished, she glanced up to see that it was 2 in the morning.

Her car service didn't answer past midnight. Great. How did she stay so late again?

She let out a hiss through her teeth as she stood up, the screech of the wood of her oversized desk chair as it was grinding into the floorboards was enough to wake the dead. Tugging her jacket from the desk, she started outside and pulled out her phone to make a call to the local cab company. It may not be the most glamorous and it may be a little bit on the unknown but at least she could get back to her apartment, right? As she stood outside her office, twisting at the waist to make sure the lock had kept the door tightly shut, she turned around to see a man crawling up from the mud and construction mess across the street. Crawling.

Why was he down there? Why was he crawling up from it? She didn't continue staring straight ahead out of fear he would make eye-contact, but she did watch as long as she could and his deep brown leather jacket was a mess with mud and his baseball cap was a faded black with a dingy off-white where white should've been. His grunts were quiet and Mai pushed her eyes to her phone to look like she was lost in texting despite nothing on her screen. She had already called the cab company and they were on their way when he stood there, staring at her as if he awaited her to look up. Maybe he was wondering if she saw anything.

The cab's headlights were a welcome sight as the rain started to pick up, thrashing down by the time Mai could run over to the door, yank it open with a creak and slam it once she threw herself inside. She slapped the doorlock on the opposite door and was quick to call out to the man behind the wheel.

"Fiftieth and Bourbon." and that's when she would finally turn her chin to look at the man but all she would see was his torso, standing close enough to the cab that he could've reached in and grabbed her out but he didn't. No, he just stood there in the rain, not even bending at the waist to peer inside the cab. The cab pulled off into the corner, turning and as Mai looked over her shoulder and out the back window, she still couldn't make out his face. Why was he there? Was this going to continue across the street?

"You know...", the cab drive spoke up finally as they were a good distance away. "Maybe you shouldn't use our service to get away from your fucked up boyfriend." and as Mai sunk into the backseat, her deep silver hair clinging to her face from the rain, she merely said..

"Mister? I don't want to know whose boyfriend that was."

It was as Mai slid over to the door to her right, where the man had stood so very close before the cab pulled away, that she finally felt the fear fade from her spine. It was a weird situation but, you know, she's home now and tomorrow would be daylight and she'd just make sure Eden and maybe her new friend Dax would be around to keep any terrors from lurking by her office.

As she was reaching for the door, she caught a symbol that had been drawn against the window by what could've been a fingertip. Just a crudely drawn Aquarius symbol that was just two mountain-like jagged lines with one atop the other. She furrowed her brows at it and pushed out of the door, the cab drive revelling in the thirty dollars that she didn't owe and yet he was holding onto with the promise of not having to return change.

Mai would disappear into her apartment, not realizing that, the symbol she had seen... well, it would come back to haunt her. It would haunt her, just as it had haunted many people for the past twenty years.

-----

( This is the beginning of a sim-wide storyline that anyone and everyone can take place in. If you do not want to take part in the story, you do not have to and no day-to-day functions of Hathian will be affected other than news being spread through normal IC channels. If you would like to help further with the progression of this story, please contact me in-world (My Paramour) and I can bring you in with us. We will be starting this storyline as a hunt for a serial killer who has been on the loose for twenty-years and has re-surfaced again.

This story will mold and shape around the people playing and taking part in it. Maybe you're part of the Newspaper and you want to write a story about something you've seen or maybe you're a detective and you want to help look for clues once they're leaked out to the public. Maybe you're a criminal and you're wanting to get closer to the story to see if it's someone you know. Whether you're following clues we plant through the sim and through the newspaper, radio, etc -- or you want to take part in being a connected part of the storyline for OTHERS to play off of -- you absolutely can do whatever you like. While the clues are pre-determined and so is the location of the mysterious serial killer, the way the story evolves is all based on how everyone roleplays through it!

I will be setting up events all through August, the first being a sim-wide hunt to follow clues left behind. Is he out there hunting for you? Are the clues a trap? Who else is in on this? Find out all of these things by participating.

If you're a group leader and you want to find out how you can involve your group in the storyline more, please send me an IM or a notecard and we can discuss bringing you into it as well. The more the merrier. Think of it like a Hathian version of one of those dark, terribly twisted Criminal Minds episodes we all like to watch. Ever wanted to be Luther? Sherlock? Here's your chance. )