Without a Trace (Carlos)

Missing people's reports were, by nature, a rather upsetting subject for Carlos. In a way they were almost worse than murders or similar acts of violence, as while dissapearing victims at least had a chance of turning back alive, the sheer scope of possibilities and unknowable outcomes that came about from something like that were...well, sometimes simply impossible to resolve. Sometimes it was better to have some sort of closure, as grim as one could be, than living the rest of your existence wrecked by doubt and uncertainty about the ultimate fate of whoever was gone.

Perhaps it was because he had heard stories like that growing up that he felt particularly affected by them: his parents talking about relatives and old friends living in other countries suddenly...banishing without a trace. He might not have met any of them, (How could he? Having been born decades after the fact) but the grief felt from his parents whenever they came in conversation still very much palpable.

So was it any wonder that he was all too eager to come help Kazuo upon being contacted about a similar string of dissapearances happening all over the city?

A dark blue van parked in front of the netcafe, the dark skinned, bleached haired Carlos stepped out of the driver's door, wearing the usual black jacket that was either one of many, or one he refused to stop wearing as long as it was clean. It was hard to tell sometimes.
An impmon walked by his side, also wearing a similarly black jacket, if one more fitting to his size obviously.

"Hey, sorry we took so long, people here sure get uppity about stop signs." Carlos said apologetic as he entered the building. giving Kaya and Kazuo a small wave, only for him to notice the other two men standing by their side.

"Uhm, hi. Name's Carlos. This here's Dio." He quickly introduced himself, his head tilting in the impmon's direction as he was namedropped.

"Charmed. We're Kazuo's...I guess coworkers would be the right term?" Dio added, sounding somewhat unsure.

"Don't mention it, Scions' gotta stick together and...stuff." Carlos said, catching himself a bit too late to not sound too cheesy in his desire of being helpful. At the very least Dio didn't take the opportunity to make fun of him for it for a change, perhaps still thinking about the talking down the two had received not too long ago before officially joining the Scions, perhaps not feeling it was adequate in the face of Kaya clearly not having a good time.

"Likewise." Was all he'd say as Luneth and Arlo were introduced. At the very least it was good to know they'd have some help when it came with their search efforts.

The rundown of the situation was about what Carlos expected, since the media hadn't exactly been quiet about the situation either: a random string of dissapearances with seemingly no correlation or conection between eachother. Of course neither he nor the media had the full picture, as he was soon to find out when Kazuo brought up digimon were also vanishing. Both man and impmon fell a pit in their stomach when learning the names of two fo the dissapearances: Hawkeye and Yuji. 

"I'm...sorry to hear that." No wonder Kazuo and Kaya seemed particularly distressed about this, they had a real personal stake in the situation too.

"We'll find them, all of them." Dio added, trying to seem reassuring, though still clearly taken aback by the news.

Once the whole briefing was over and it became clear how the rest of their day was going to pan out, he'd turn himself to face Dio, giving him a knowing look.

"Ah right, if we're going to ask around we should probably get something...a bit less conspicuous."

Dio merely looked back at the human, a blank expression in his face and his arms crossed. After a bit of an awkward silence, Carlos would add a somewhat pleading "Please?", to which the impmon rolled his eyes with a sigh.

"Fine, fine." With a loud click and a sparking of light, Dio's body was nowhere to be seen, in his place a slender black cat with green eyes stood, his flicking tail and gaze betraying an air of annoyance. "You really should consider updating this thing. Fur is a painfully obnoxious thing to content with." With his complaining done he'd leap in a single bound to the top of one of the cafe's tables, and from there to Carlos' shoulder, where he made himself comfortable before turning to face the group.

"So, how should we split up?"

"I say we keep it to two groups. I'm hoping this will be risk free but just in case it's probably better not to split our group too thin."

"Ah, yeah sure, I'm cool with that." Carlos nodded, not having any objections to how Kaya planned to split the group. Though seeing how Dio would be part of the digimon side of the investigation, the holosuit was probably redundant. "Er, Dio, do you want me to-?"

"No no." Dio quickly replied, his voice betraying a small amount of strain, though Carlos couldn't tell if it was annoyance or just due to the "cat" doing some stretches as he did. "That's fine, I'll keep this thing on for a while longer. Changing in and out of it feels weird anyways."

Either that, or the imp actually didn't mind the form change as much as he did, but Carlos wasn't about to start arguing about something that petty. Once that was settled he'd leave out of the building along with Arlo and Kaya, leaving Dio and the rest behind to deal with the digimon.
Once they arrived, said invited trio seemed rather unsure of what they were even doing here, even after Kazuo very politely explained their plan to them. Not that Dio could blame them, if he were in their shoes and back on the digital world he'd much rather be looking for his missing friends on his own than answering questions about it.

"Are all of you and your missing friends part of the same group?" Dio asked, politely if a bit brusque. "Did any of you knew eachother before they bani-" He paused for a moment, considering his choice of words, "...er, went missing?"

---

A subway ride later and the trio would arrive at the house of their first witness, a woman by the name of Momo. While Kaya and Arlo radiated at least some amount of confidence in their stride as they knocked on the door, the man couldn't help but feel slightly out of his element. It was almost funny how facing off against mountain sized monsters and sword wielding ghosts of the past seemed like small fry to the simple act of interviewing someone that had literally lost someone clsoe.

That feeling didn't quite improve as Carlos couldn't help but fidget in place ever so slightly as Momo very rightfully doubted their detective "look". He gave a nod as Arlo reassured the grieving woman, trying his best to keep up what little credibility they had but otherwise kept quiet (lest he betrayed the sudden wave of self doubt that kept washing over him like a defective buoy) as the digimon slowly but surely convinced Momo to at least give the investigation a chance.

"Well...let's start with the basics. Do you know where your husband was or was supposed to be before he dissapeared? Work, groceries, that sort of thing?" Carlos was the first to ask. Indeed it was a basic question, but it was better to set the scene first before asking the real hard hitting questions, not like he could start his line of questioning by "did you see something resembling a portal during that time?"

Dio gave Kaya a small shrug (or as close to one this cat holosuit could get, as if to say "don't worry about it".

At any rate, the digimon's starting answer to his question answered on thing while leaving a lot more up in the air. The dissapearances didn't seem to be targetted at a specific group of people, at least none that actually knew eachother previously, so that already removed a possible connection. Hell, for all intents and purposes they didn't seem to share any similarities on a surface level, personality or otherwise.

Just as Dio was about to jump to another question, something else caught his attention as the dissapearing Dracomon was brought up, and how he had been affected since "Agumon was loaded". Ah yes, loading, one of the digital world's biggest taboos for some, a sad part of reality for others. Despite living surrounded by that former group for the better part of years now, deep down Dio couldn't bring himself to be nearly as horrified about that prospect as most other digimon seemed to be. Perhaps it was from years spent on the Dark Area forcing him to accept it as a fact of life, perhaps it was his past memories influencing him, in the end the result was the same.
So perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising that Dio would quickly zero in on that little detail.

"Could you tell us more about that loading? The culprit, the why, anything at all." He soon added, "This could be significant to the investigation, so I'm sorry if I'm asking where I shouldn't."

Already theories were forming in his mind...most of them rather on the grim side, but at the very least Dio had enough tact to not bring any of them up just yet. No need to further upset their only witnesses.

---

"Sorry to hear that. I can only imagine what that must have done to you two." Carlos said, feeling even more out of his depth than he already was. Great, so this wasn't just a missing person, but someone not in the best state of mind by the looks of it. Were it not for the fact they knew he wasn't the only one, Carlos could already imagine a good number of reasons why Saburo might have banished. Some of them voluntary, none of them happy.

Just as importantly however, Momo reveaeled him mentioning to a coworker something to the effect of "Stopping at somewhere interesting", whatever that could mean.
Obviously it was a long shot to focus solely on that detail, but it was worth keeping in mind for later, though Carlos would certainly ask more about it.

"It could be anything, might even be nothing, but just to be safe: do you happen to know if he always took the same route to his work? It could maybe try to help us narrow down the search area, maybe check security footage of any cameras there." Of course that last part was half a long shot, half him talking out of his ass to try and seem more legitimate. There was a possibility they could try to get said footage for themselves one way or another, but really just being able to narrow down where to look for clues was a start.

The more the group of digimon shared, the more an obvious pattern began to emerge. All of the missing ones shared at least one thing in common: they all had lost someone close to them at some point.

Trying his best to ignore the sudden pain he felt somewhere in his chest as Kazuo's innocent comment reminded Dio of his own "lost one" (even if his gut told him he was doing fine), he instead focused on Luneth as he approached Dio for his opinion.
He rubbed at his chin pensively, his gaze completely focused yet looking at nothing in particular, clearly lost in many a thought.

"This might be a bit...presumtious. But I think that's our best lead so far. Whatever it is that's happening to these digimon, it could have something to do with their shared situatiom. Someone or something specifically target those that are grieving, maybe?" He posited, though clearly he himself didn't seem all too convinced of his own theory. It seemed far fetched, but frankly it's not like they had much else to go on for now.

"Feh." The holosuited imp shook his head, brow furrowed in an irritated look. Why couldn't investigating be as easy as in those cheesy whodunit movies Carlos loved so much? "Sorry, still new to this whole deduction thing. In my honest opinion though? This isn't a coincidence."

---

Momo's testimony helped narrow things down a fair bit, or at the very least told the group where they could look. Furthermore, Kaya's contacts were nothing short of efficient when it came to giving them the relevant help with evidence, even if the footage gave Carlos more questions than answers.

A misterious figure appearing to a now missing man in front of a train to work? Had this been a less dire situation, he would have probably made a comment about how it reminded him of the plot to a certain video game, but this wasn't the time or place. Besides, seeing this he kept coming back to Momo's comment about Saburo telling a coworker something about "an interesting place."

"...he's handing him an invitation maybe?" He said, almost without thinking, before elaborating. "You know like a business' card or something advertising a place. Hell, a new job offer even, I don't know." If only technology was good enough to allow extreme zooms on security footage, then maybe they could simply read directly from the card held in Saburo's hands, but alas such Blade Runner esque fantasies were still just a bit out of reach.

"Alright, so that's weird enough but then what? Does he still make it to work?"