1330/Sensing the Shadow: SHIELD field operatives are setting up sensors in Metropolis

Sensing the Shadow: SHIELD field operatives are setting up sensors in Metropolis
Date of Scene:	23 April 2020
Location:	Eastside - Queensland Park
Synopsis:	SHIELD team set up audio, UV, infrared, laser, seismic, radiation et el sensors all over Queensland Park and up the streets to the north in the hopes of catching the shadow invaders in the act. The biggest issue raised in the briefing was a lack of knowledge about these creatures. Now it's up to the data crunchers and fate.
Cast of Characters:	Bobbi Morse, Dane Whitman, Jane Foster, Jessica Drew

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Bobbi Morse has posed:
Cameras, Microphones, Infrared, Ultraviolet, Communications. This is as much field research as it is a SHIELD operation. You get to wear the SHIELD cap and say "Official SHIELD business" to inquisitive citizens after all. We're out here, walking the streets, installing every kind of scientific sensor under the sun. More data is required on this threat. It moves, it emits strange sounds, it hypnotises people and if the rumours are to be believed, it might be an eldritch horror invading our world.
    Bobbi is the current senior agent on scene, but that doesn't mean she's sitting back. She's walking a beat setting up audio sensory equipment. "Is this what you imagined, when you signed up to SHIELD, Agent Whitman?"

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane Whitman grins sidelong at Bobbi as he calibrates the acoustic sensor he's just finished putting into place. "It's all I ever dreamed of. Except in my dreams, I had one of those jackets with SHIELD in big letters on the back. Do we even have those?" He jokes...but the SHIELD baseball cap is definitely on.

"Aaaand just...about...done!" He confirms the settings on the tablet he's holding, and hefts the large duffel filled with additional sensors. "All right, let's see..." He scans for a suitable location...not too far away, not too close...good coverage.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi grins, "The blazers are available yes. Different sizes, all the same stylish black. It's slimming." She puts an infrared sensor through her belt loop and climbs up a bit of building face to get to a slightly higher vantage next to a sign, then sets up the sensor. "Look if you get excited every time you get one sensor working, this is going to be a really long day. We have thousands of these things to spread out over the city." She double checks the ear protection she's wearing. The idea of it falling out at the wrong time and ending up hypnotised is a special kind of horror.

Dane Whitman has posed:
"What all the fashionable agents will be wearing this fall?" Dane comments with a wry smile, then shakes his head slightly in amusement. "Consider my expectations tempered." Dane replies, chuckling, "Good thing too, I was just on the verge of really flipping out over how awesome this all is." His tone is mildly deadpan. Definitely /not/ too excited, but not completely bored, either. Hey, at least he seems relatively focused as he moves over to another position, climbing up an available fire escape to get one of the microphones relatively up-high. Another couple of minutes and another sensor is in place. He's efficient in the work, even if he's keeping a sense of humor about it. You'd have to to avoid going nuts from tedium, most likely. The life of a "Level 1 Agent."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    She drops down the small distance from where she put the sensor. On her tablet she marks out a few locations she sees some public utility cameras to loop in to their surveillance set up. "Besides, I'm at seventeen already. Not that it's a competition, and as not a competition, I am winning." This is how you avoid the tedium, you make a game out of it. Lives aren't immediately on the line, so it's the right time to be playful. "And if we've kept a decent pace, we might get to the meetup spot ahead before anyone else."

Jane Foster has posed:
It takes her a little longer, but Jane Foster eventually gets here. She doesn't tend to wear the SHIELD cap or SHIELD jacket or SHIELD anything except one of those nifty badges around her neck. Partly because most people recognize her name in action if not her face, and it's easier to pawn off questions like 'Consultant' and 'Nobel' in conjunction with 'Ask that blonde lady any questions.' Compounding this is a pair of oversized sunglasses and a definite aura of /working/. Therefore, she has a bit of concern.

More data requires more effort, and some of the more impressive wiring requiring attentions. She holds a staked object that probably serves as a sensor or an array relay. It's very exciting, all of it. "I remember doing something like this in university," she murmurs, and helpfully angles to find a location where it will triangulate appropriately with the other ones. "The blazers do like nice, and you'll never hear me complaining about a good blazer."

Yes, she has been helping along. Scientist? Tedium? Yes! They go together!

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi points to the sensor array that Jane has set up, "That only counts for one." She points to her eyes and then back to the sensor array. Her smile is genuine, her poker face is for serious moments in life. "So, either of you have any fun theories on what kind of threat we're facing here. I'm a big fan of a secret army of shadow assassins from a lost alternate reality created by some sort of failed time travel experiment, driven mad by the endless darkness as the stars in their universe go out one by one have set their sights on.. Queensland Park, NYC." She affixes another one of the audio sensors to a lamp post.

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Seventeen, huh?" Dane laughs, shaking his head slightly, "I dunno, I always tend to prefer quality over quantity. But when you can manage both, why not?" Dane clambers down the fire escape gracefully enough that it's clear he's perhaps a fair bit more agile than the typical R&D guy. He trots over to yet another vantage point, working to set yet another mini-microphone, with the same brisk efficiency as the other two. "Let me guess, the prize for winning is another bag of sensors to set up somewhere else?"

He calibrates as he heads away, studying a tall building before him. "Gonna get one on the roof there." He notes, heading towards the lobby and speaking into the communicator on his wrist, "That's a pretty good one, as theories go. I was thinking more along the lines of the souls of ancient cultists, whose bodies were disintegrated by an angry eldritch entity from beyond space and time, trying to summon an army of followers to enact a depraved ritual that will bring them back to corporeal form." Elevator to the top floor, stairs to the roof. The door lock is dealt with easily enough, and before long he's slapping one more acoustic sensor right at the top.

Jane Foster has posed:
"I'm not Gimli, I know the one shot counts if it matters. No oliphaunts here!" Bad Lord of the Rings humour has to put her among the literati and the geeks, the nerd clique and more. Marching around, Jane is not quite obsessed with placement as much as she is testing. "Shadow assassins? No thank you. Assassins are bad enough. I like the notion of something hunting for a lost object that turns out to be an egg, and it needs the object of relative historical significance to manifest. Imagine something innocuous." Her mouth tilts up a little bit, measured with a further grin. "Like a bell or hat carried back from the Civil War, stored here in Metropolis, and being shunted around in a collection." She twitches her shoulders slightly, carrying on to another promising location.

It seems like a tree is going to be the right one, since it already has an exciting amount of crochetwork on the trunk. She hides it among the colourful creations, though forced to stand on tiptoe to do it. "Make sure that you go another twenty or thirty feet over. We need that reflection."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
There's something special about working in a team again. "Someone is going to be having happy data dreams once this is all set up. Endless databases of sound samples for computer algorithms to sift through. The data scientists are getting Christmas early this year." She heads the appropriate thirty feet away and sets up the reflector. "It could be a dimensional thing, you know like the theory that the universe is a hologram and we're a 4d projection from a 2d surface. The shadow is really just one big being that is really far away, utterly unaware its having any kind of presence here and it's a total coincidence that our brains become hypnotised by the sounds it makes as its particles interact with the air... just one gigantic seven dimensional being wandering through space."

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Could be, could be." Dane replies, frowning at the readouts on his tablet, removing the sensor he just placed and replacing it with another one. He slings the pack once more, heads downstairs, and plops the bag down nearish where Jane is working, only to take a knee and proceed to produce a small toolkit and open the faulty sensor up, starting to tinker away at it with some fine tools. "Mm...shoddy soldering job here. That's gonna take me off pace. Oh well." He continues to work while he talks, "Maybe the shadows are of alien creatures hiding among us, trying to brainwash us in preparation for full-scale invasion, only their cloaking technology is faulty because they're not from a yellow-sun system and our lightwaves cause them to cast outlandish shadows." The sad part is that it's hard to tell where the jokes begin and the actual possibilities end, isn't it?

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi takes a knee and folds out her laptop to check their progress and the other teams wandering the streets here and in the north of Metropolis. She files another report back to HQ about where they're at with the operation. "If there's one thing you can look forward to with SHIELD Agent Whitman, the work is extremely varied. One day eldritch horrors, the next aliens with faulty cloaking devices. Do you have a nickname you want me to use, or do we get to pick one for you?" She shuts her laptop and puts it back in to her backpack as a police officer approaches her. She steps away from Jane and Dane to talk to him about his concerns. Something something official SHIELD business, yes they have permits for this, officer thank you for your concern we are SHIELD, would you like a pen with the shield logo on it? She rejoins the team, "Metropolis police are quite nice."

Jane Foster has posed:
"Perhaps it is merely bitter at life. Something that hates the light, trying to eat it all. But that doesn't explain why it hypnotizes people. What is the value in a trance other than using the pause for some search maybe? I can only guess." Jane isn't much of a guesser, sometimes. Her own plotting device she sticks to another flat surface, out of the way, where the little grey object blends into concrete walls and barely notices. This gives her at least an opportunity to gaze over the area and cosnider. "We have the sonic frequencies of interest. Someone might liken it to brain damaging devices, sonic attacks used in the Cold War and proposed by the Israelis as a countermeasure around their embassies. That really doesn't feel right to me though." Her mouth quirks as she assesses the vicinity. "I ran a search on a lot of the buildings. They have some historical significance. I wondered whether the buildings themselves had weight or things within them, and I'm really leaning more towards objects with some kind of age and importance. Not one to suggest they littered treasure like breadcrumbs for themselves, but there might be a ... residue ... or something that interests them. Like the weight of emotional years, maybe it's sustenance? Your guess is as good as mine."

Her fingertips brush along the wall and she holds up her phone, taking a pair of pulse measurements with a fitted attachment that looks exactly like one of those Square devices to swipe credit cards. Except in this case, it has a rapid measure. "If anyone breaks dimensional laws here, we should know about it."

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane fits together the newly-repaired sensor, moving over to slap it on a nearby lampost. A few taps on ye olde tablet and it's online and transmitting properly. "God Bless higher education." He murmurs, then comments to Bobbi, "I'm used to plenty of weird, believe me. This is almost relaxing by comparison." At her comment on the Metroplis PD he chuckles, "Everyone here seems like they are. Dunno what I expected but it's a nice change of pace from the Big Apple." He glances about and chuckles, "I don't know if I could live here though. I think my system has adjusted and the comparative lack of smog might cause a shock and kill me."

Jane Foster has posed:
The hint of a smile warming her lips, Jane admires the work in progress. Dane is clearly more than sufficient and checking on the transmissions from the various sensors they've plugged all over the vicinity. Her smile widens slightly. "You getting the readings you wanted up there? We should see some fluctuations through conversation, though I can go ahead and try and playing the tone we heard from the recording just in case. Figure if we get that set up, we can determine if the network is functioning within parameters." All this she says well away of any interested police or public, though she chuckles at Bobbi, shaking her head. "Friendly out here, without question. It has almost too clean a cut to the place. Maybe we ended up in the Netherlands by accident? Possibly Metropolis, Denmark?"

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Sweden?" Dane offers, glancing around and grinning a bit, "Maybe not enough towering blondes for that." He studies the readouts on his tablet, and nods towards Jane, "It's picking up and filtering the conversations all right. Scary to know that our finest data analysis techs are likely aware we have an awful sense of humor."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
A finger is placed to her ear, "Say again. Copy that." She rolls her eyes, "Nope, no Netherniceopolis, Denmark. There's a LEO undoing another agents hard work. Keep going I will be right back," she gives them a thumbs up and starts to jog down the street. It doesn't take her too long to see the perplexed SHIELD agent trying to argue with the police officer who seems to think he's doing his civic duty. It takes her longer with this one, but after a while she makes her way back to see how everyone is doing.

Jessica Drew has posed:
It stands to reason that the nebulous beings that they are chasing would frequent rooftops. That's been Jessica's selected venue for sensors. Not wishing to call attention to herself she is dressed in streetware-a black turtle neck over black stretch pants absolutely nothing to turn someone's head as long as they don't see her clinging to a building headfirst as she attaches a sensor that will blanket several rooftops at once. It activates adding itself to the network. Thumbing her phone, she impatiently brushes her hair to the side and flips off the side of the wall.

"Where to next? Did this last one come on line?"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Looking up from her tablet she sighs, "I have bad news. Agent Drew is too good at setting up sensors on the tops of the buildings. There's no way any of us down here are winning this totally not a competition." She taps her ear piece and responds, "It's brilliant, we need to get more coverage to the north, where the creatures have apparently been migrating/moving, whatever it is we're calling it. Also, what's your theory on what we're facing. We've had quite a few good ones so far. Misunderstood giants, eldritch horrors, aliens, ...," she responds to Jessica over the comms link.

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane watches the sensor ping on his readout, and nods, "Yeah, I'm reading it loud and clear, Agent Drew. Thanks." He asides to Bobbi, "You're right, totally unfair. Maybe we could disqualify her from the competition that totally isn't a competition?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
Feet dangling over the edge of the ten-story drop Jessica kicks her feet for all the world like a child on a jungle gym. Peering down thoughtfully, she considers the question, "I must have missed your speculations." Her Oxfordian accent making the consonants particularly resonant compared to her American colleagues.

"Giants? I don't see it. Excuse the pun. Erm. Aliens? That one doesn't strike a chord for me either. But, have you considered other dimensions? People not quite here but trying so desperately to contact us that they would do anything?"

She laughs at the competition remark, "I totally win. I totally do not but height does give certain coverage. North, you say?"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    She grins widely and glances back to Dane, "Ding ding another one for my sort of my initial theory. I proposed they were shadow assassins from a dimension that got erased by a time travel accident. Perhaps I put too many twists on it in retrospect." She picks up her bag and slings it over her shoulder, "Okay, let's keep going, lots more ground to cover. Yep, north, we're spreading out and fanning up northward from Queensland Park in general. We can't predict which sensors are going to get lucky, if any at all..."

Jessica Drew has posed:
One hand on the parapet, Jessica rises and circles in place looking for a suitable course north to another destination. Phone out, she consults the compass app on the screen and walks in that direction with her head down, face shadowed by her long hair as nonchalantly as walking down the street, not ten stories high. At the corner of the building, she stops and matter of factly jumps the gap, merely an alley worth of gap to the next slightly lower building.

Working her way north, sometimes jumping buildings, other times climbing the sides, modern all glass structures requiring attention, brick buildings as easy as stairs, she moves a kilometer north. A breeze ruffles her hair as she stand surveying a park, the tops of trees beginning to fill in rustling below her.

"Oh, so other dimensional beings? I rather like that idea," she says blithely. "We just need a Tesseract or someone who can dimension walk, right?"

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Do we have those just lying around?" Dane replies, hoisting up his duffel bag o' sensors, and grinning a bit. He /could/ totally cheat at this non-competition, but his manner of doing so would be a lot more conspicuous than Jessica's wall-crawling. "I mean, I guess Daniel...Doctor Hastings kind of fits the bill there? Maybe?"

And that said, he gives Jane a bright smile, and starts to trudge northward the old-fashioned way.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
"Tesseract you say," Bobbi replies blithely. She heads down an alley way and finds a sturdy pipe to attach an audio sensor to. She ties it on with a zip tie and links it in to their network. "Hastings you say," she says coyly and chuckles. Sometimes a topic of discussion touches on something she's not quite sure she should talk about, so she likes to just skirt past it and let conjecture fill the space. "How much do you think all this gear costs. After we're done with it, after we've dealt with this thing.. we'll have to clean it all up and put it all back in storage. The odds of us needing this many audio sensors and uv and infrared cameras and whatever the heck is on Jane's sensor array again have got to be pretty low. But hey, at least we're not sitting in cars on a stake out waiting to see if everyone becomes hypnotised..."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Despite having spent many of her formative years in a coma, the young agent-cum-PI, has gotten quicker on the uptake in the past few years. Hastings, is it? She grins to herself, intrigued, wondering how much she can tease her fellow agent.

"Hastings did you say? Oh, oh. He's rather nice that one. And, so right, I never can get good tea on a stakeout unless I bring it myself. Coffee gives me an acid tummy if I drink it all night. The perils of surveillance and all that."

She works as she talks leaning over the edge of the building and placing the sensor just so in an attempt to cover the roof and the park. "Just how sensitive are these?"

Dane Whitman has posed:
"I can guesstimate, but it depends on whether SHIELD is putting these sensors together in-house or buying them from someone else, and that I don't really know." Dane Whitman replies to Bobbi's query of how much this all costs. "But I'd put it at 7 figures, easy."

"Sensitive enough that everything we've said for the last half-hour or so is already in SHIELD's databases. But more specifically, looks like the sensor about 250 meters to your west picked you up clearly enough to be intelligible. So...pretty sensitive. They're boosted even more so on frequencies beyond normal human hearing."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
"250 meters? that's impressive. I thought these were the recycled prototypes for the gun-shot detector.. plus any other equipment they were scrounging up on short notice." She notes down several public cameras to have tied in to their sensor network then sensor up the laser interferometer and seismic sensor for this street on the edge of a shopfront and alley way. "What do you think Coulson is thinking of when he gets that distant stare look happening. I can't be the only one whose noticed it. Hill pretends she's not seeing it I'm sure. My guess, he's thinking about his car."

Jessica Drew has posed:
"I have yet to see the car," Jessica replies, in gossip mode, which she knows will be relayed to a sub-routine that will highlight sensitive words or topics. "I never have really wondered what what was on his mind when he stares into space. Hmmm. Thumbing the sensor on, she asks, "Got that one? These /are/ rather nice. I could use these on my leopard chase. I wonder if HQ will let me req a few?"

Looking about her, she deliberately steps back from view of the park below, some sense that she is being watched ruffling her nerves. "I say, where to next then?"

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Oh, if you've seen the car? You know he's definitely thinking about the Car." Dane replies, not actually knowing Coulson so well beyond his initial recruitment, but man...that car. "Yep, it's online." Dane says as he checks his tablet again to see if the new sensor is registering. Folks are working fast, we're getting feed from all over the place now. But I wouldn't be surprised if SHIELD has a few extra. Would've been remiss to not have potential replacements. Not everybody slapping these up can likely do field repairs."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
"I suspect a dragnet of surveillance across a part of a major city is reserved for existential threats. Is the leopard hunt.. I fear to ask.. an existential threat?" Bobbi checks the signals map and says, "Right well we're getting a lot of coverage. I think if we swing back a little west, we might be done."

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Existential? It might depend on your perspective. Certainly to the animal in question which was stolen from the Central Park Zoo's Temperate Zone collection." Jessica strolls the rooftop, somewhat warier than she was before, now certain that someone or something saw her from the park below.

"I would like to do surveillance on a few exotic pet shops. I think there is a link to something bigger than some rich idiot wanting to enlarge his collection of animals. Criminal or maybe worse."

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane shifts the display on his tablet to cover the west. "Agent Drew, if you can put one about halfway up on that tall building with the pointed spire one block west of you, it should give us maximum coverage. After that it's likely just a few closer to ground level. Getting into the streets and alleys there's going to be a lot of sound bouncing around. But enough overlap and we should be able to filter it all well enough." He starts to head in that direction glad the duffel is considerably lighter than when they started. "So is there someplace besides the food court with the fake windows that Agents blow off steam after stints like this?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
After checking her orientation, Jessica reverts to more normal locomotion, using the stairwell into the building she is in, then prosaically taking the elevator. She does the elevator stare, of course, she belongs here!

Out on the street, she consults her phone app and moves off west looking for the spired building. On alert she skirts the perimeter of the park moving towards the building that she spots. "Alright, got it. This is going to be interesting to climb. I wouldn't put it past them to lock the stairwell in this type of building. Give me a few. You'll see when I put the sensor online."

The last question brings a faint smile to her face, "Well, there is the city! Why not grab something here before we go back?"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
"Well, there's a diner I like to go to. Can't say the food is terribly good. There's also the coffee shop though my ritual is to go there for breakfast. There's a few bars down town if you don't mind driving. But hey, we're in Metropolis, let's check maps and see if there's anything that catches our eye, sample the local flavour, as Jessica says." She starts picking some locations for a few more sensors and then heads to the first on the list to get another infrared sensor and audio detector installed.

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Sounds like a plan." Dane breaks out his phone to text Jane, just to make sure she gets the message. Then sets to doing a search to see what's nearby, occasionally checking the tablet to make sure the other sensors come on-line.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Granite and glass, a vestige of a pre-war building heyday from all she can see. Climbing buildings has gotten her interested in architecture, it's a long slog to the top. Jessica is almost breathing hard when the building starts to become smaller as it rises into that final spire. A decision made, she stops before going up to its very top. For one, it is very visible.

"You know if I go to the tippy top I am going to have to do a King Kong imitation but I am currently without a Faye Ray. Here it goes. Tell me if it syncs and I will be down to you in a thrice!"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Thanks to Dane's suggestion, they manage to get full coverage of the zone. There is sadly no triumphant sound from the software to indicate a job well done. "Well, that pretty much gives us all the coverage we will need. Now it's all down to fate and the number crunchers.. which means how about drinks on me." She puts her gear away and zips up her bag, "Let's drop things off at the Quinjet and then head for some food. Good job everyone."