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Tony: “It’s slime, but specifically from another room. The room above this one is a bedroom that is completely covered. Like, from head to toe, in every corner. And, the excess slime seeped through the floor vent into this room.”

Looking closely, Joe could see a ceiling vent where the slime likely leaked through.

Joe: “OK… How much slime are we talking about in the room above?”

Tony: “A lot, and I mean A LOT. That’s why I paged you. I heard from another forensic team about finding a slimy substance at another site. I tried to contact them, but they were all busy. But then, I remembered that it was your team that apparently found the slime. So, I called you over to tell us if this looks similar to the slime you found.”

Alan: “Joe, this looks like the same slime that was at Larry’s home,” he said, quickly chiming in.

Joe: “I know.”

Tony: “So, you have seen this before. Do you know what it is?”

Alan: “No.”

Lewis: “Pft, some investigator you turned out to be,” he said, disparaging Joe\'s ability as a detective.

Alan: “We called in another forensic team to look over Larry’s home after we did our initial search. Making sure we didn’t miss anything. The slime we found—one of the enforcers on our team—suggested it was some sort of mucus from a lizard used for spell crafting. The forensic team tested it to see if it was that, but it came back negative,” he said, while ignoring Lewis\'s disparaging comment.

Tony: “Did they figure out what it was?”

Alan: “Nope, they had no clue. They were pretty sure it was mucus, but they had no idea from what. They sent it off to the university for specialized testing.”

Tony: “I guess I will have to wait for the university results. It’s not toxic or anything, right?”

Alan: “I hope not. Cause I got some of that gunk on my hands. Did you get some on you as well?”

Tony: “No, but Lewis and a few others rushed into the bedroom and slipped and fell into that slime. Just want to make sure they’ll be alright.”

Lewis: “TONY! Why ya gotta tell him that!” he shouted.

Tony flinched, his eyes widening in shock at the unexpected ferocity of Lewis\' outburst. The words had come out of nowhere. The anger in Lewis’ voice had been so uncharacteristic, that it left Tony momentarily frozen, unsure of how to respond. Ꞧ

Joe: “Why were you rushing into the bedroom?”

Lewis: “None of your business, you’ll find out about it in the report I have to write.”

Joe sighed heavily. As he met Lewis’ fiery gaze, Joe steeled himself, preparing to deliver the ultimatum he knew was necessary at this moment.

Joe: “Look, let’s stop wasting each other\'s time. I know you don’t want to be doing this, you had your own shit to do before getting roped in with this joint university project. It’s the same with me. So, a temporary ceasefire. We stop dicking each other over until this Jixi thing is done. OK?”

Lewis grumbled, the sound low and full of frustration. He was wrestling with himself, torn between his pride and the practical reality of the situation. The idea of going along with this agreement didn’t sit well with him—there was too much bad history that couldn’t be easily forgotten. Lewis had always been prideful, and the thought of setting aside those old grudges was anything, but easy. Yet, as much as he hated to admit it, what Joe had said was ringing true.

Before he had gotten roped into working with the Sleuth-Hawks, Lewis had been focused entirely on something else, a case that had demanded his full attention. But ever since this whole Jixi situation emerged, everything has become more complicated. It wasn’t that anyone had a problem working with the university; the real issue was the extra workload that came with the Jixi investigation. The police investigators were already stretched thin, and now they were expected to divide their efforts between their own ongoing cases and the search for Jixi. It was overwhelming, to say the least, and the strain was showing on everyone, especially Lewis.

He had been putting in countless overtime hours, running around frantically just to keep up. It was getting to him, making him more irritable and grumpy than usual. The responsibilities were wearing him down.

Lewis stood there for a few seconds, his thoughts churning. He didn’t want to give in—his pride urged him to hold his ground—but deep down, he knew he was too tired to keep fighting. The constant battle, both at work and with Joe, was draining him, and he just didn’t have the energy to keep it up. Reluctantly, he decided to relent. For now, at least, he would put their differences aside.

With a weary sigh, Lewis nodded and agreed to temporarily stop the feud between them. It wasn’t a surrender, not really, but more of a practical decision he told himself. He didn’t have the strength to keep fighting, not with everything else he was dealing with.

Lewis: “We were in the middle of a raid. Busted into this home to apprehend a man named Guss von Hecktor.”

Joe: “I see, so you ran into his bedroom trying to append this guy, and then…slipped…” he said, while holding back the compulsion to make a joke at Lewis\' expense.

Lewis: “Ha, ha, ha,” he said sarcastically. “ I’m sure this is hilarious for you.”

Joe: “I didn’t say anything.”

Lewis: “You\'re thinking it. But… yeah. That’s what happened.”

Joe: “Did you get him?”

Lewis: “No, we can’t find Guss anywhere. We searched up and down this bloody house, and didn’t find anything.”

Tony: “Um, not entirely nothing. We found more incriminating evidence.”

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Lewis: “Not that we needed it. We already had enough evidence to arrest Guss.”

Joe: “I guess I should roll this back a bit. Who is this Guss and why was your team arresting him?”

Lewis: “My team, like yours, got assigned a bunch of people to look into as well. Guss von Hecktor is a rich nobleman who came up in some of Sorin’s writings, which the university uncovered. I did some digging around and managed to find some questionable financial transactions between Sorin and Guss. From there, I was able to get a warrant for his arrest, and I fully intended to grab this guy today. But now, he seems to be missing.”

Joe: “Is this Guss guy someone who bought his way into nobility, or inherited it?”

Lewis: “He’s old money. So, he inherited it.”

Joe: “Hmm, what was his connection to Sorin exactly?”

Lewis: “Pretty sure Guss was helping fund Sorin’s whole undead project. Sorin wasn\'t acquiring the materials for his experiments through the university; he probably did that to hide what he was doing from Archmage Dakka, so he needed a source of money to buy those materials. It lines up with the fishy financial transactions I managed to find.”

Joe: “But, why was he funding Sorin?”

Lewis: “That’s something you’ll have to ask Guss, who is currently missing.”

Tony: “Actually, I think I might know why he was helping Sorin.”

Lewis: “How do you know?”

Tony: “It came up in the evidence that the forensic team and I managed to uncover while searching Guss’s home. We managed to find a journal that outlined a lot of Guss’s interaction with Sorin. It seems like, from what I read, Guss didn’t know entirely about the whole undead thing.”

Lewis: “How did he not know what Sorin was doing?”

Tony: “Because Sorin didn’t frame his project as turning people into undead, he framed it as a form of mind magic. Guss thought Sorin was developing some sort of never-before-achieved mind control spell.”

Everyone was taken aback by what Tony was saying.

Magic that directly influences the minds of others is an extraordinarily rare phenomenon. It is a type of power that most mages have never seen, and for good reason—such abilities are almost mythical in their scarcity. It only manifests within Null mages born of unique magic, similar to Joe, and mind-control magic might be the rarest of all types of known magics. It is a form of magic so infrequently seen that many believe it to be little more than a legend, whispered about in hushed tones among scholars and sorcerers alike.

Joe could easily imagine a variety of reasons as to why someone like Guss, a nobleman, would be interested in this kind of magic.

Lewis: “I have heard of countless famous archmages trying and failing to reproduce any form of mind magic, let alone mind control, and he honestly thought Sorin could develop that type of magic. This is a type of magic you have to be born with. You\'re not reproducing that.”

Tony: “It seemed Guss was very convinced Sorin was onto something.”

Lewis: “Then he was a bigger idiot than I thought.”

Joe: “Maybe not. Was anything in that journal about Sorin bringing in some students from the university for a meeting or something?”

Tony: “Yeah. How’d you know?”

Joe: “Then that’s it. He probably brought in one of his undead to show off. Made some influential students follow every single one of Sorin\'s orders right in front of Guss. If you didn’t know about the undead nature of these students, it would be easy to mistake it for some form of mind control.”

Tony: “It is as you say. It was mentioned in his journal that Sorin brought in the son of the noble Scefer family and made him debase himself right in front of Guss.”

When Tony mentioned the Scefer family, Alan instantly knew who Tony was referring to. The realization stirred a sense of awkwardness within him, but he chose to remain silent, letting the conversation continue without revealing his thoughts.

Lewis: “Interesting. You didn’t also happen to find out where Guss might have gone in the journal, did ya?”

Tony: “Not really. The end of the journal just has him being paranoid. It’s him complaining about feeling like he’s being watched by someone. And, everything before that in the journal is…gross. He outlined his plans for the mind-control magic. A lot of sick and twisted fantasies about him using it on a bunch of noblewomen for his own pleasure. Even mention making Yin Whitetail into his personal slave.”

Lewis let out a long sigh.

Lewis: “That’s kind of a given. Why else would you be interested in that kind of magic?”

Tony: “Yeah, Guss is a real scumbag.”

Joe: “OK. So, Guss was funding Sorin’s whole undead project. He was most likely doing this unwittingly, but was still doing it with malicious intention. You got a warrant for his arrest and raided his house, but when you got here he was nowhere to be found. All you ended up finding was slime in his bedroom. Is that correct?"

Tony: “Yup.”

Joe: “Was this slime anywhere else? Any other rooms in the home?”

Lewis

: “Just the bedroom and a bathroom that\'s attached to it. Oh, and possibly outside the house as well. Tony and the forensic team found potential signs that there might have been slime clinging to the side of the house.”

Tony: “We found signs that there may have been a trail of slime that went from ground level up the side, and into the bedroom. But, we’re not a hundred percent sure. It rained not too long ago, and could have washed all the slime away.”

Joe: “Did you find a pile of clothing anywhere? Possibly covered in slime as well.”

When Lewis heard that, his eyes widened in surprise, clearly taken aback by Joe’s question.

Lewis: “Yeah… did you find something similar during your search?”

Joe: “We did. We found a bunch of clothing covered with slime that we’re pretty sure belonged to our suspect, Larry. What did you find?”

Lewis: “We found sleeping robes and underwear lying on top of Guss’s bed, it was also covered in slime.”

Joe: “So this slime has appeared at least in two locations. Both in bedrooms and with piles of clothes covered in slime. And, both subjects of our investigation are mysteriously missing. It can’t be a coincidence. It all connected, with Sorin being the common thread between these two people. Hmm, turns out your slug transformation idea might not be that far-fetched,” he said while padding Alan’s back.

Lewis: “What? What’s this about slug transformation?”

Joe: “Alan here suggested that maybe Larry turned into a giant slug, ain’t that right?”

Alan: “R-Right. I did suggest he might have turned into a giant slug monster,” he nervously affirmed Joe.

Joe: “Barring any ordinary explanation, we\'re left with only un-ordinary explanations. And, advance curses that transform people into monstrous creatures is not unheard of.”

Tony: “You honestly think he was turned into a giant slug? Well, actually. That would explain the possible slime on the side of the house. He could have transformed into a giant slug and then crawled out the window and down the wall. It would also explain the clothing covered in slime. He would shed his clothing when transformed.”

Lewis: “Whoa, whao, whao. You\'re not actually buying this? C’mon, a giant slug, really? If there was something like that roaming the city, we would have already heard about it. Someone would have seen it and reported it to us, cause it\'s not every day you’d see a giant fucking slug in Graheel.”

Joe: “Hmm, true. Maybe a small slug. No, too much slime for a small slug to secrete,” he mumbled to himself.

Lewis: “Why are you so obsessed with these guys turning into slug creatures?”

Joe: “I’m not. I’m just trying to exhaust all our options. Cause I don\'t have a clue what’s going on, do you?”

Lewis let out another long sigh.

Lewis: “Not really. Maybe someone is taking out our suspects by kidnapping or killing them, or they fled. But, the slime is extremely weird. Did our suspects put it here, or was it someone else? And, why is it even here?”

Joe: “Exactly. I threw out the curse transformation idea because it is the most straightforward at this moment. The Grayscale College studies things like curses, and Jixi was part of that college, so there is an obvious connection there. Although, I’m rethinking the curse angle at this moment. Curses have a lot of limitations to cast, and there are easier ways of dealing with people than cursing them.”

Lewis: “Sounds like it is going to come down to the test result of the slime you sent off to the university. Do you have an estimate of when that\'s gonna get done?"

Joe: “Was actually either tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. Is when I was told when the test would be done. You can swing by my desk later that day if you want to know.”

Lewis: “I think I\'ll just read it in the report you write up later about it,” he said, still not wanting to interact with Joe more than he had to.

Joe: “If that is everything, I’ll get out of here and let the rest of you do your thing.”

Tony: “Yeah, I just wanted to confirm if this slime was at another site. And Joe, thanks for coming.”

Joe nodded before walking off, with Alan following behind.