Detective Work

After flying for a few minutes, I was finally at the hotel. Unfortunately, I still couldn't use two machines at once so it took me longer than if I were to use my jetpack.

'Okay, I have to be in contact with a machine for me to hack it. Since it's most likely a close-circuit security system, I can hack the system by touching one of the cameras. I'll have to be careful and make sure I don't move it though just in case someone is paying attention.' I thought before approaching one of the cameras on the roof of the hotel. Hovering right beside the camera, I delicately touch the camera and begin to hack it. Due to my technopathy, I didn't need a screen to see the video from the cameras, I could see it in my mind.

'The conference started at 9 in the morning. I'm assuming Chloe arrived a little earlier than that, I'll start the moment she arrives at the hotel.'

Pulling up all outdoor cameras where someone could park, I scrolled through the footage until 8 in the morning when Chloe showed up after being dropped off by a cab. Then she walks into the hotel and heads toward the hall where the conference was being held. She then meets up with the group that is in charge of the conference.

After a 30-minute pre-conference strategy meeting, Chloe heads out to get her station ready. Fast-forwarding up to the moment when Barney and I left, nothing of note happened. The entire conference she was doing her job and no creeps or weirdos came up to her.

'Okay after Barney and I leave is when something had to have happened. I just scrolled through hours of footage with no clues.'

I decided not to fast-forward the hour that Chloe had left, but I did play at it two-times speed because there is a lot of dead air. After seeing 30 minutes of the footage, that's when I noticed something.

'What was that?' I thought rewinding and zooming in on the background. In the background, you could see two men talking to each other while making repeated glances at Chloe. In the middle of the conversation, one of the men looked around to make sure no one was looking while the other began to take photos of her with his phone.

'Two men taking photos of a girl while making sure no one catches them. They could be staking out a target. At least, I have something to go on.'

Continuing the video, the men stayed far away enough to not be noticed by Chloe but near enough to keep an eye on her. Once Chloe's shift was done, she went to check in with her manager while the two men trailed her. After being done talking to her manager, she went outside and didn't call a cab, but started walking. I was able to see the two men following her path, but the cameras weren't able to see much more than that.

'Okay, she didn't call a cab to go to the bar, so it's safe to assume she's taking the subway. Luckily for me, subway stations have cameras that I can hack into. I'll check for any cameras on the way to the nearest station since I doubt they snatched her in the station. They had to have done it before.'

Flying to find the station in the direction Chloe went, I was able to see it was only three blocks away. Before going to the station, I flew to a street camera on the corner of the first block to check the footage and see where Chloe went.

Hovering right above it in a similar fashion to the first camera, I connected to it and fast-forwarded to the time Chloe should've passed by. All that happened was her walking by with the same two dudes trailing her until they were out of the camera's line of sight.

'Nothing on this one, but towards the end, the two men start walking a little faster. That means it had to have happened after this. Let's hope that the next camera catches it.'

Flying over to the next block, I find the camera broken.

'Shit. The cameras were broken. I wonder if that's because of the two men. They might use this area more often than I thought. Anyway, there has to be a working camera around here.' I thought before looking around and seeing a camera on a bodega across the street. Going over to it, I touch it and fast-forward to see Chloe walking on an empty street.

'Weird, an empty street in New York? It's not even that late.' I thought continuing to watch the footage. As Chloe continued walking down the street, ahead of her a light flashed twice. Then the two men behind her rushed up and snatched her. Followed by a van coming out of an alley in which they tossed her in the back and jumped in before the van took off.

'Just like I thought. It's a group of people that use this area to kidnap girls. Two of them follow their mark, one signals to the duo the coast is clear, and the other sits in the van ready for a quick getaway. But this seems like too elaborate of an operation to r**e one girl. That means Chloe escaped somehow before they could do anything else to her. How else would the SVU squad know something happened to her?

Unfortunately, the van has no license plates and no defining features. It'll be hard to track down the van itself. I have clear enough pictures of the duo that trailed her but the other two are still unknown. Now I need to decide if I'm going to hunt them down myself or send all this footage to the SVU. Either way, I have an alibi, but I can't help but feel slightly responsible. After all, she probably would've taken a cab home if I hadn't invited her out.'

Deciding to debate my personal responsibility over the matter later, I flew in the direction the van went to use the cameras to trace its path.

~~

After quite an exhaustive tracking, I was able to pinpoint the location where the van stopped. It was an abandoned factory building near the pier.

'Why do criminals always go for abandoned factories? Can't they use a nice apartment for once? I could probably sweep all these factories and find 10 different criminal groups. I know it's nice and secluded and all, but come on.' I thought to myself before I quietly landed on the roof of the warehouse.

'I can't use two big machines at once for long periods of time, but maybe I could use a small machine and a big one. I want to make a mask similar to the one the Yautja use. Let's see if that'll work.'

First, I had to think about what I wanted the mask to look like. I definitely didn't want a big mask like the Yautja, so I decided to do something similar to Haku's mask from Naruto. I always thought his mask was much cooler looking than the regular ANBU mask since some of the animals make the mask look odd.

Anyways, the mask was similar in design to Haku's except it was black with white markings instead of white with red markings. It also had a transparent cloth that covered my head so no hair would fall out and leave any DNA. Communicating with my OM-1 the design and the functions I wanted from the mask, it appeared on my face shortly after.

'Nice. And I feel no strain from using my stealth suit and the mask. That's good and it also opens up more things I can do. Deal with that later, right now I need to see what I'm dealing with.'

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AN

I've seen some people confused about why'd he go through so much trouble for a girl he just met, and simply put he feels a little responsible. Obviously not let me kill them and their nine generations but still guilty enough to track them down, which poses zero danger to him.

Also, there are not going to be a lot of dark elements like SVU showing up all the time, it was more for introducing one of the shows. Of course, there will be moments like this in his homeworld but they are few and far in between. As for the slice-of-life aspect, I'm not really sure what to say considering it's one of the tags. It's not entirely a slice of life but I also feel like jumping into one world after the next kind of ruins the whole thing. That's one of the things that bothered me about other group chats, they go on missions for like 50 chapters, and then they're in homeworld for 1. But that's my opinion I guess.

And a lot of the shows and/or movies I introduce are more for the "oh, cool I know that show/movie" aspect and not necessarily a plot point. Worldbuilding if you will. He won't get involved with every plot of a show or whatever because well that's too tiring even for me.