It was only after stepping into the elevator and facing the front and press the button for her floor, did she finally notice a wisp of a woman's figure, that long hair paired by the stylishly shaved scalp, the woman smiling and waving hello at her just as the doors were closing.

Dove stood there a little bewildered, but simply waved back and went back to waiting, and mentally preparing for whatever tasks she had today.

Laurence was the first to greet her, looking a tad bashful as he was smoothing out his hair, after coming out of the meeting room. Dove could see through the window as she passed by, the mess of marker lines and sticky notes on the whiteboard that she couldn't understand, but likely made sense to Laurence, in the moment.

"Good morning." He told her as they both walked over to the break spot.

He didn't have his usual suit jacket on either, or a button up, turns out he actually just wears the usual polo shirt paired with suit pants like her, the heat was getting too hot for either of them to continue wearing them solely for the comfort.

"Good, morning." Dove hesitated as she looked him up and down, from him to the meeting room.

As far as I could guess, there was no one else but him in that room for hours.

"Did you, um-ah never mind." She said quietly as she just went to making coffee, pulling out two mugs from the cabinet below, and checking the coffee maker for how much water it had before pressing the coffee button.

"Go ahead and ask him, he needs a reminder and I'm tired of doing it." Bence popped in out of the blue and asked, sneaking in-between them to grab the phone he nearly forgot on the counter.

Unlike his usual dark colored attire, he was wearing a completely white shirt paired with black pants, but it looks like he still couldn't ditch the suit vest.

"I noticed you arrived just in the nick of time. Did something happen this morning?" He looked over to Dove and asked, all while still moving around the office, never stopping.

He went to his desk, sifting through papers, newly printed ones with pictures, and tea-stained, old ones with some scriptures similar to runes.

"I had to run an errand."

"You seem to run an errand every morning." He pointed out, looking at her eye bags.

Laurence made his drink before taking a better glance at her, taking a sip.

"Did you sleep enough last night?"

"... Did you?" Dove fired back unconsciously, eyes widening upon realization.

The detective, with his own pair of vivid eyebags, also stares before chuckling, defeated.

"Ahahaha. Nope."

He pat her on the head before walking back to the meeting room, Dove didn't want to bother him so she turned her attention to Bence, offering to take out a mug for him but he waved her off.

"This errand took a moment, I also bumped into someone at the store, Lucia."

"Oh, did she threaten to eat you?"

"Wha-.... No."

Bence blinked, once, twice, realized his words and nodded, slowly stepping away, giving her space, heading to the back door to the stairs

"Ah, I see. You don't have to worry about her then."

"Sure..." Dove said, not really bothered but intrigued. "Are you, going to the third floor?"

The necromancer looked over his shoulder at her, just as he was grabbing the door handle.

"Yes. Do you need anything?"

"Ah, if it's not any trouble, could you tell Annabelle I said hi?"

He stared at her for a good few seconds before grinning and nodding, leaving into the staircases.

"In that case, go help Laurence, makes sure he doesn't stay in that room all day, don't look too much at the photos."

Dove hummed and went over to the meeting room after gulping down her caffeine.

The photos were everywhere so to ask her to not look at them too much was a bit of a challenge.

"That thing with the sack for skin." she mumbled, looking at each one.

"There's also dark watchers, some trails of ghost woman but we leave them alone usually, and skin walkers. Don't worry, most of them are on a leash."

He was looking at a whiteboard, having used some clips to pin a map of the city of Portland, clearly some markers were used to draw out routes, there was math on the whiteboard next to it, with the radius formula and algebra equations. Some sticky notes were tapped onto certain parts of the city, when Dove looked around, she saw that street names were written on each of the photos, using white marker, since the nightmare things took up a lot of space, and hidden in shadows.

"So then, you stayed here nearly all night. Bence told me to make sure you didn't stay here all day." She said quietly, wanting to reach out and grab his arm that was nearly shaking, the same arm with the shaking hand nearly about to tip his coffee that he took a sip from.

"He says that, but to me it's better than sitting at my desk and burning my eyes after staring at the desktop screen for hours."

She hummed, thinking how to pull him away as he stared at the whiteboard pensively.

"Is there anything you need from me?"

"Actually yes, but first I have to ask-" He faced her as he put the marker down on the board's arm.

"-are you feeling ok after that whole haunted house field trip?"

"Yes, I mean, I am wondering if the nanny's skeleton was taken care of, but there's not much I can do regardless of the answer."

"I see." He hummed, trying to read her as she continued looking around the room, before his eyes lit up with an idea.

"I mean, you could have the ability to take more actions on cases like those if you wanted, all it takes is getting promoted from your intern position, to say, a detective?"

"I'm only 18, so while that sounds nice, that goal would be two years away. I'm afraid that after two years, I may forget my original goal, whether I even passed or not."

Dove stood by the table that had a more peculiar looking photo, one that was just peeking out of a cream-colored folder. She looked back at Laurence who waved a hand to it, smiling like he was eager for her to notice it.

It was left on a table that had nothing else but the case file, the photo peeking out almost too obviously and coincidentally. What was the word that combined both meanings? Oh, apparent.

"Go ahead and open it if you're curious."

She carefully flipped open the folder, careful not to shake of shift any of the papers inside, picking up the photo.

It was of a doll or human/personified figure of some sort, made from what looked like materials that professional doll makers would not use. Taken from an angle and distance that hinted the camera person was in hiding as they snapped the photo.

"This photo was submitted to us by one of our field agents, reporting that while the Sennentuntschi was moving like a zombie, it was clearly on an intended path. Normally she and her team would take care of loose entities roaming around like this, but-"

Laurence waved her over, and Dove put the photo down to take a closer look at the whiteboard as he began to explain all the math written on and around the map. Now paying more attention, there was a circle with some radius and circumference math done on it, marking a specific block.

"She asked around and apparently, even though this being falls in the category of nightmares, it's mostly a folk take creature. Not to mention, made of physical or near modern things. Some normal people she questioned, mentions seeing or hearing sightings of it since the time we got a case request from the real estate agent about the old house."

Dove listened intently, like a child eagerly waiting for the next part of the story. It wasn't a very present emotion that any regular people could detect from her, but it was clear that Laurence could tell she was feeling that way through that glimmer of curiosity emitting from her dull, blue eyes.

"Do you want a guess at what this could be?" He asked her, trying to pique her curiosity and turn it into an eagerness, subtly asking if she would like to get involved.

Dove seemed to blink from listening and shook her head.

"Um, that they are connected, maybe? I'm not all that smart so I wouldn't know, but you probably do-"

"No, no. Go on, take a guess, it won't hurt to help me a bit, and if you're wrong, then that's my opportunity to teach you why." He gently assured her.

Dove, not one who likes disappointing people who give her opportunities like this, looks at the board with all its notes, and goes back to the table to read from the file more, and Laurence didn't object to it, so she wasn't afraid to do so. It was shown by her shoulders that weren't slumped like usual.

The report underneath the photo said that when this Sienna person and her other teammates tried to capture this "Sennentuntschi" thing, it simply put itself back together, or got out of their grasps so adamantly that they could tell it had a goal and continued to follow it.

"If the date of when this being became present was around the same time, we did that job at the house,,, where there was a ghost, and, mannequins..." Dove slowly spoke, then muttered, before thinking to herself silently, putting a knuckle pressed above her lips.

It felt like the gears in my head, the mechanics that I had long abandoned out of thinking them useless and a nuisance to getting by, were being dusted off, cobwebs torn away as they began turning again!..... Sorry for any who had to read that, I forget this is a journal/documentary and not a diary...

It was Laurence's turn to eagerly listen to her, motioning with his hand that gesture that meant 'continue'.

"Go on." He said encouragingly.

"This Sennentuntschi is likely on the hunt, or trying to search and follow something, or more likely someone, the same someone who left those mannequins in that old house!" Dove said excitedly, surprised at her own voice.

"I mean, that's the only explanation I can come up with for now, I mean- why else would an old house that clearly hadn't been touched for decades, just have these life size mannequins with ball-joints?! The early 1900s didn't have that technology!" She whisper-yelled, becoming more visibly excited as she thought and looked more at the papers, without noticing his presence that studied her with a joy, having finally cracked open a bit more.

The man leaned back against another table in the room, crossing his arms, one leg over the other.

"So, you know what a Sennentuntschi is?"

"Yes! They're from Swedish folklore, I used to love reading about all kinds of creatures. It made me feel less afraid to read about more fantasy creatures, when I always kept seeing the nightmares, that people also thought were fake."

"It must make you overjoyed, the thought of actually meeting a real being from folklore then." He simply guessed as he watched eagerly read more of the case files, the giddiness visible in her beady eyes filled with revitalized wonder.

"You seem really intrigued now, want to learn more? Say, shadow the field agent on this job?"

Dove went back to being doubtful again, keeping her nervous grin as she didn't want to say an upsetting no to him, but she doubted herself more than her yearn to please others.

"I,,, I'm not qualified, I don't plan to be an intern forever, but I'd get in the way."

He pats a hand on her shoulder, and when she didn't flinch or try to pull away, he gives her a firm look with a grin.

"That's alright, if you make a mistake, Sienna will teach you. Nothing bad will happen to your position on this job, I unfortunately need you to go anyway, since I can't."

"Why not?"

"I'm not, exactly allowed out on field cases, yesterday was an exception but not this one. You don't have to worry; Sienna and her teammates will keep you and Joon safe."