The diviners of the Mystic Division of M-Com found evidence of some sort of supernatural activity in south Italy dispatching several teams to investigate incidences that may or may not be connected to the divinations. Thomas Riley and Kasper Sierzant were sent to Messina along with six other M-Com operatives to investigate ten high-profile missing person cases.
Starting with a list of ten names including two employees for the Medici Tech company, three individuals with ties to the Oberti crime family and five other individuals. Searching the official police files, the most that Agent Sierzant could discover was that all of the missing persons had disappeared from their homes at night.
Arriving in Messina, Thomas and Kasper decided to go to the police to figure out if there was anything that the police had that wasn't listed in the official records. They spoke to an Inspector Marisa Carracci who was running the investigation into the disappearance of a reporter by the name of Dino Alduino. Thomas led with a rather ludicrous back story of Alduino being a long lost uncle via a bit of youthful indiscretion on the part of a sister or brother or such. Fortunately, Kasper was able to provide enough details from his research on victims to support the confusing story and place himself as the kid's "glorified babysitter".
Inspector Carracci decided to take the opportunity to ask some questions of this young man about some evidence that had been kept off the official record. She showed him some multi-colored gemstones, including one that seemed to be an anatomically correct eyeball. Thomas asked if they had found the gemstones at the other missing person's sites. Carracci caught the slip but Kasper managed to conceal it, and stated that he had done some research on Alduino's disappearance, giving Carracci more "evidence" she was dealing with someone important that she wanted to impress.
Thomas took hold of the evidence bag and tried to sense something with his mystical nature. This unfortunately triggered a burst of bright light followed by a semi-humanoid screaming mist that vanished after a few moments leaving the gemstones colorless.
Thomas managed to cut off Inspector Carracci's accusations by making his own complaints first, accusing her of being reckless and demanding to know what she'd given him. Eager to avoid a lawsuit from someone she still thought had money behind them, Inspector Carracci resorted to threatening legal action and demanding Thomas and Kasper leave. Thomas tried to walk out with the gemstones but failed to get them past the inspector.
Returning to the safe house where they had left Rk. Kallistos Robin Daley to secure the base, they contacted M-Com and reported the crystal eye. M-Com agreed with Kasper's assumption that some entity had rendered Dino Alduino into gemstone and then shattered him but they didn't know of a particular creature that did that for sure. However, the agency was a little bit annoyed with the attention they had attracted at the police department.
As the discussion with M-Com completed, they noticed that there was a brown paper wrapped package that Rk. Spellmeyer had picked up in the market. It turned out to be a small stone sculpted door. Thomas felt some sort of dormant or sleeping power in it and, figuring that this wasn't a good thing, started to try to seal it. Unfortunately something went wrong and the door seemed to activate somehow, glowing and getting bigger. Tossing it aside, it passed through a sun beam and vanished in a burst of light.
Having also noticed that Spellmeyer had been affected by magic of some kind, Thomas and Kasper had him bring them to the market he purchased it from. They couldn't find the precise stall but found a dormant residue of dimensional manipulation. While Thomas went to buy some gelato, Kasper spotted a thug watching them. Unfortunately, the thug made them and started aiming a pistol.
Not wanting to have the fight in a public place, Kasper, Thomas and Spellmeyer lured the thug away, Kasper didn't quite manage to catch the thug by surprise but fortunately, Thomas used his chain sword and an ambush position from up above the streets to "disarm" the thug before he could fire on Kasper. They collected the thug's phone and stabilized the bleeding from his severed arm and leaving before the police came.
On the way back, they were ambushed again while investigating the thug's phone and discovering the name Celino Leonora Adessi as the person the thug last called. The ambush came after Thomas accidentally started calling the number. A few moment's later Spellmeyer was killed by a sniper. Thomas went to the roof tops to attack the sniper while Kasper looked for other threats and found three more thugs closing in. Thomas took a bullet charging across rooftops before pulling the sniper out of his belltower using the chain sword and making the killer go airborne in two pieces. Meanwhile Kasper quietly took out two of the thugs, though the third got a shot off at Thomas before Kasper took him down though taking a shot himself that he felt through his armor.
Kasper tried a little bit of quick first aid and treated his own injuries but made a mess of removing the bullet from Thomas's shoulder. Thomas managed to reclose the wound himself using a mystical, mediation technique to force the wound to close. They then tried to leave the area with Spellmeyer's body but had to stash it somewhere to avoid being found with it by the police.
Getting back to the safehouse, they found that the agent assigned to investigate Medici Tech, Rk Narciso Therese Valerio, only found that they were rivals of Suidobashi Heavy Industries. Some internet research revealed that Adessi had been a minor hitter for the Verona crime family until recently and now she had minions and power. In addition, she had recently purchased a small island with a history of tragedy and haunted activity. A look into the Suidobashi Heavy Industries company revealed that they had won a few recent bids that they were competing with Medici over until two of their employees went missing, two of the ten total missing persons.
They took some time to recover, sending the other agents out to recover Spellmeyer's body, and then staged a nighttime raid on Adessi's island. They managed to sneak past several more of those sculpted doors using a veil spell but the guards were alerted when a wall they tried to climb over collapsed. Thomas sensed a ritual occurring and relayed the info. Kasper and Thomas left the other M-Com agents to deal with the guards as they moved to interrupt the ritual. Though one of the guards tried to stop them, they managed to get past him and in to the ritual room.
Thomas moved to lash out with his chain sword, channeling its magical nature to turn the power of the ritual against Adessi. The assassin had time to cry out "What have you done?" before a stone portal grew up behind her and a long insectile leg stabbed out into her. Adessi started turning into gemstone and screamed until her lungs had converted. As Adessi died, and was shattered by Thomas, the portals around the island failed and collapsed. Thomas and Kasper turned their attention to helping mop up Adessi's thugs, but in the wake they discovered that Rk. Valerio had been converted to crystal after getting too close to one of the portals. They recovered her crystalized body in case she could be cured later.
Investigation on sight revealed a ledger that showed Adessi was using her new found summoning skills to take on assassins and then fence off the remains of the targets for extra money. She had several pieces of evidence showing she'd taken contracts from the Verona family to target eliminate members of their rival Oberti family. There was also information that the Medici Tech contracts were taken out by one Kurata Hikozaemon, but there is no sign that this person has connection to Suidobashi Heavy Industries. Their superior, Adrense assured them that the information would be delivered to Inspector Carracci.
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