WEEK 03

[modmachine]

Preparation for the holidays continues at a steady - if slow - pace. Almost all traces of Halloween are gone by now, except for a few rotting pumpkins shoved into compost heaps, but with over a month until Christmas and the Day of Lights, nobody is yet in a hurry. Still, a few early holiday shoppers are out and about, usually in pairs if they aren't families with children, happily chattering about gift plans.

Weather forecast: The rain has passed, and days grow clear again for this week. Hex’s weather has been getting colder, and people are bundling up a bit more - even those who don’t need to, just in an effort to fit in. Hats and gloves are being prominently displayed in stores, even if they’re not strictly needed yet.

Moon phase: The moon is full on Monday the fourteenth, reaching peak fullness over the city at about 2AM. Afterwards, it begins to wane.

More employment: More decorations for the Day of Lights are going up, with some stronger-backed labor being recruited for the stockrooms in preparation for the incoming holiday rush. No one seems concerned about work history, a boon for people without a human paper trail. The park lights aren't finished yet, either, though things are on schedule to open next week.

Hitting the books: To prepare for the holidays, and raise funds for their community party, the library near the university is selling some of its used books. Most of them are fine, if an odd selection - you might find a cookbook, or you might find a book of poetry. There’s something weird about the books, though - a few of them smell faintly of mint. Watching over all of this is a sharp-eyed librarian. Don’t take a book without paying, or she’ll get up from her desk and try to block the door. She keeps having to chase away teenagers with dirty hands, too.

Bake sale: Some of the local schools are starting to take up donations for their holiday parties. One in particular in the residential district is holding a bake sale in front of the elementary school for an hour each day after classes let out. If you can fight through the sea of small children hoping someone will buy them something, you’ll find a variety of brownies, cookies, and tiny cakes. Many of them are lopsided, but a few look put together by expert hands. They cost more, of course, but it’s all for a good cause. A grouchy mother can be found near the cash box at all times, making sure no one steals the money.

Whoo are you?: Malin will notice that owls seem to be happening at her; they're hard to see, just shapes against the lesser-dark of the night sky, but they definitely seem to be watching her. They particularly seem to gather when she feeds. If she doesn't confront them, this will increase slowly but measurably throughout the week.

Time waits for no one: An old clock tower in the part of downtown leading into the Sixth has been restored to functionality... Mostly. The belltower stands empty, though there's a visible place where a bell should be hung, several stories above the floor. Ryoji might find the scene familiar. On Wednesday evening, there is some kind of reopening gathering at the church below it; the brief service and meet-and-greet is not particularly unusual, save that the young Acolyte handing out papers in the entry won't step into the congregation hall itself.

Like a dog with a bad...: In the Sixth, the construction is ongoing, still with the same handful of men, who rotate through almost like randomly generated NPCs. Lurking around outside is a thickly built man, who watches the whole goings-on with suspicion; strangely, he seems to be watching it mostly through the camera on his phone. On Friday morning, though it shouldn't be cold enough for frost, three of the strangely similar men slip on patches of ice and fall behind a half-finished wall... Where they vanish completely. They reappear after lunch, if it's even the same men, with no signs of injury. That afternoon, the man with his phone looks smug.

A touch of the season: And speaking of ice, passage into many of the city's Avernian Gates is blocked this week by a thick frost that seals the entries shut. An Unsettling Youth and his girlfriend can occasionally be seen investigating them; though they're constantly together, they don't seem much inclined to talk to each other. Occasionally, she'll drape her arm over his shoulders and giggle, while he looks confused; other times, she seems almost to shy away from him.

Comments

Kitty | OPEN; closed to Hajime; closed to NPC

[runs]

1. Open

Kitty is out with a purpose today, and a few days after that, too. She needs to make sure that she can shift safely in more than one place around the city, and to that end she needs to hide clothes in various locations so that she won't run around naked after returning to her human form.

The problem here is, obviously, that she has no money. But nobody can't say that she isn't resourceful. It's just different resources from the ones that the shopkeepers would like to see.

In other words, she has the ideal ability at hand to perform petty clothing thefts. She can mask her appearance, full-sensory to both man and machine.

She visits a number of higher end and lower end children's clothes and shoes retailers all over the city. Never those that will have a salescleark breathing down your neck the moment you enter, but rather those where you can shop somewhat anonymously. Her approach is simple: She enters looking the same way in which she left, claiming that she was just trying to pick out what she wants her grandmother to buy for her. At least that is what most people see.

People that have reason to assume that masks or illusions are a thing and may purposefully try to see through them might notice that this kid is performing shoplifting in plain sight, feeling perfectly secure in that nobody will notice - sometimes even chatting with a salesclerk or costumer after she's already snatched something up. Because in reality, she enters barefoot into shoes stores and only very lightly dressed, but with shoes on her feet into clothes stores. And she leaves with shoes on or, in the case of clothes stores, with a second layer of clothing (or a third, if they also sell coats, then she came in without one) over or under whatever she entered in. People who can notice that will also notice that her eyes aren't human at all, but rather resemble that of a cat very closely.

The tactic is easy - pick up a bunch of clothes, go into a fitting room, pick what she wants and put it on, and then drop off the rest of the bunch of clothes when she exits the fitting room. They always say that you should count what you take in with you, but nobody really counts, she has found. It's a bit more complicated with shoes, but trying on a number and packing them back up neatly with one empty box among the full ones works quite well.

Talk to the single child browsing shoes or clothes, or approach her about using magic to conceal that she's a little thief? She'll at least quite happily engage into conversations. Just a little darling child here, nothing to see. Dropping her story about the generous but immobile grandmother on interested people before someone can wonder, preferably.


2. Hajime

Kitty will be pointedly searching for Hajime this week. There's something that she needs to ask him, after all. At one point, she finds him, and whatever he's doing, she'll only let him finish it if it's talking to another person. If not, she'll just head over and address him directly.

"Hey."


3. NPC needed :3 ; Friday afternoon

The thickly built man will find that a little girl, clad in a thick coat and a colourful hat, is watching him. She noticed him the day before and at first did it stealthily, but today she decided to just sit down nearby and stare at him, and finally she'll hop off what she was sitting on and walk over to him.

"What are you watching?"

2

[chalicejoker]

Hajime looks up from the shot he was framing. "Hey." There's a pause. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

It's a school day, right? He thinks? It's hard to keep track of where small humans are and aren't supposed to be.

[runs]

"No."

...She doesn't even have an identity, for starters, - she doesn't come from here, which may be worse considering that she seems to be the only one - so there is no school that she could go to without raising eyebrows. If she even wanted.

"I have a question for you."

[chalicejoker]

"What is it?" Knowing this kid, it could be anything. And Hajime has grown fond, despite himself.

(Probably a good thing for her, if something comes up where she needs an actual adult for anything...)

[runs]

(Tobias and Ryoji are totally adults, too :| They're only half as ancient looking as Hajime though, so there's a point in that.)

"A friend of me found something." She pulls her commlink out and shows him a description. Author and location stay vague and anonymous. "Do you know what that is?"

[chalicejoker]

"Where did this friend find this?" This is significant enough for Hajime to communicate a bit of worry through his expression and tone. "It's...really better left alone. And stayed far away from."

[runs]

"I don't know." Which isn't a lie. "What is it? And," she takes her commmlink back and pockets it again, "why can he still not see the wheels?"

[chalicejoker]

"It's something dangerous." There's a slight bit of hesitation. "Another corporate drone, you could say." Which is not something he is happy about. "I wouldn't know why whoever saw this could see it and not the wheels, no...unless it wanted to be seen."

[runs]

"It wanted to talk to him, to tell him that it ...something about the person it talked to.

So it was like the things that fly around downtown and the Walls?"

She pauses and stares up at him. "You think it was an angel?"

[chalicejoker]

There's a bit of hesitation. "I'm a demon," Hajime says flatly. "I know an angel when I see one."

[runs]

That's a new word. The shopkeeper only mentioned angels.

"Can you imagine what it was trying to tell him, and why?"

[chalicejoker]

"Can't have been anything good." Hajime shakes his head. "You can't trust angels." There's a pause. "That one may have been in the process of Falling, but even so..."

[runs]

"Failing at what?"

Nogee talks a lot about things not being good things being dangerous, things... and so on, all those vague warnings that don't contain any actual information, so that is some meat to latch onto.

3

[modmachine]

The man seems rather pleased with himself, though he glances over at her briefly. "There was a construction accident over there earlier today," he says, nodding his head at the working group.

[runs]

"And then?"

He looks awfully happy for someone talking about an accident.

[modmachine]

"They just disappeared. Didn't call an ambulance or anything." He shifts his position, so he can look at her while still keeping half an eye on the group across the streets.

[runs]

"...If they disappeared, you couldn't call an ambulance for them because they're gone.

How did they disappear?" She does the same, looking from him to the workers and back again.

[modmachine]

Perfectly logical kid. He nods. "Walked behind one of the half-finished walls and didn't come back out. I took a walk around the place; couldn't see them from any other angle, either."

[runs]

"So either there's a trap door or an invisible dragon ate them." Testing, testing, how will the guy react to such outlandish alternative options... She stares up at him, studying his face.

[modmachine]

If he's bothered at all, he doesn't show it. Probably thinking kids to himself in a very put-upon voice. "People would still hear an invisible dragon, don't you think? And a trapdoor, they'd still have to come out sooner or later."

Hence why he's watching, or so indicates his gesture towards the construction site.

[runs]

"Then what do you think that happened to them?"

She moves around a bit, trying to peer at his phone and see what kind of special view he might have on it.

dice me her attempt at peeking?

[modmachine]

"That's what I want to know," he says. "They were creepy f - creepy guys even before this." He catches himself from swearing in front of her at the last moment.

8!

[runs]

"What did they do that made them creepy?"

Continuing to try to most sneakily peek at that phone screen.

[modmachine]

It's hard to tell what he's looking at, since it doesn't seem to be any different from her view of the building.

"It's not so much what they do, it's just..." He seems to be debating on if he should share this with a kid. "Look at their faces if you can get close. They're all the same two or three guys."

[runs]

"...Clones?"

Well, that's disappointing. She looks away from the phone and over at the compound, squinting at them.

"Or maybe they got facial surgery to double for someone." Neither of those sounds convincing. If someone put that much energy into them, they would probably not be working construction. Unless, of course, it is a kind of cover. But then why use people that are so obviously weird?

"What does them vanishing behind the wall have to do with that, though?"