Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-5999656-20180122052038/@comment-25389303-20180125113205

A troubled look passed over the superintendent's face. "Yes, well, I've been telling the Council for years that the growth of organised crime in the kingdom has gotten out of hand, but did they listen? Of course not! It was only after Beacon fell and crime rates shot up that they began to take notice! It's high time we started cracking down on these groups, otherwise we'll end up just like Mistral..."

The old man's eyes widened a bit then. "Ah, excuse me. I was rambling a bit there, wasn't I? Back to the matter at hand then..."

Turning, he swiped the screen behind him to the left, moving it to the first of a series of images - this one being a map of the city.

"This particular criminal has a bit of a track record, I'm afraid. The robberies began around three years ago with a series of break-ins at a variety of different locations around the city - houses, shops, that kind of thing. We didn't think much of it at first, since robberies are rarely considered high-priority around here, but after this continued for some time we began to see a pattern..."

He swiped again, moving to a second version of the same map, but with countless red circles dotting it. "What was perculiar about these cases were that they were fairly easy targets, but the robberies themselves were pulled off with a form of...foreign proficiency you would normally find in professional heisters - career criminals who more commonly target banks and the like. The disturbing lack of evidence at the crime scenes are actually what led us to believe that these robberies were carried out by the same person in the first place.

"Since then, a total of three-hundred and thirty-two such robberies have taken place. Despite the sheer scale, cameras have proved less than useless, and any fingerprints we have found don't match anything in our databases, so without a suspect they're worthless. After such a massive operation one would have thought our thief would be content with his earnings and retire, but strangely this has not been the case." He sighed and looked at Nozomi. "You'll want to pay close attention to this next bit, as here it gets interesting."

He swiped a second time, bringing up a paused video from a blurry CCTV reel. "Several months ago our thief suddenly ceased his string of robberies and turned his focus on more challenging targets. Organisations and businesses we believed to have connections with criminal elements were targeted - but before you start thinking our thief has turned over a new leaf, they started hitting us too. Just last week one of our smaller precincts was broken into, and our thief made off with one of our primary databases. Literally, the damn thing was ripped from one of our storage units, and nobody has a damned, bloody idea how the bastard did it!"

The superintendent had become agitated now, repeatedly slamming his fist onto he table as he spoke. Eventually he stopped and cradled his head wearily in his hands. "Now this 'Data Thief', as they have come to be known as, has brought business confidence in the city to an all-time low, and if this continues for much longer the city's economy will begin to suffer because of it. Not only that, but belief in our competence as a police force is being chipped away at with every day this damned thief is not behind bars."

He swivelled in his seat to face the holographic screen. "This is the only piece of footage we have of the suspect, taken last month at one of the locations that were hit, so at least they aren't completely infallible..."

The old man pressed play. Taken at night, the footage was grainy and low-quality, but thankfully the camera that had recorded it had night-vision capabilities, so it was still watchable. For a while nothing happened, but then a figure darted out from behind a building adjacent to the one where the camera was mounted, only appearing for a second before seemingly disappearing into nothingness, like a ghost. Hemingway rewound the footage a bit and paused on the exact frame the figure was in complete view.

"Our analysts haven't been of much help. They say the person is about six feet tall and well-built, but that strange suit they are wearing makes it impossible to know from this angle whether it's a man or woman. Unfortunately, those are the only clues we have on the thief's physical appearance."

Hemingway pressed a button on his desk and the screen behind him shut off, before he leant back in his chair, suddenly looking very frail.

"That concludes the briefing - such as it is. I really do hope you're up to this case, Nozomi. Because if the three of you can't catch this guy, then I don't think we as a police force stand a chance."