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

[runs]

Silver. She makes a face.

"Then it probably got stolen." Putting a big, silver (looking) thing out there where anyone with some equipment could get to it?

"I need to try something with you later." See if he can, if not infrastructure, at least see angels. Considering that Hajime was sure that that is what appeared to Ryoji at that gate.

[dangerouslyinlove]

Ryoji nods. "Alright... I need to talk to you about something, too." Lirisoir's warning has him worried, especially considering how young Ebru is. "Meet you in an hour?"

[runs]

"...Where are you going in that hour?"

She'll can back in an hour, too, but why can't she just tag along?

[dangerouslyinlove]

"To the church service, to see if I can figure out about the bell? It probably won't be very fun..." He knows he and Thanatos have enough trouble with it, considering certain... conflicting views of the afterlife.

[runs]

"...What do they do at church services?" She's seen one or two on trid, but they were always weddings and then something really exciting interrupted them. They're probably not like that in real life.

And if Ryoji even says that it probably won't be very fun...

[dangerouslyinlove]

"Talk. A lot," Ryoji sighs, "About what happens when you die a lot, and I kind of think they're wrong? And stuff like that." Trust him, you wouldn't like it.

[runs]

"That sounds really boring."

It sounds a lot like shadowing people. She takes a step away from him and waves. "I'll pick you up in front of the church in an hour!" And with that, she runs off. She has things to do, anyway.

[dangerouslyinlove]

Ryoji waves she runs off, heading in. It is, in fact, very boring, and all he can get from it is that the bell fell and they don't have the money to replace it. It's a start, he guesses. Maybe he can find an article or something now that he knows what he's looking for.

He's slightly late for meeting up with Kitty, but he's there soon enough. "Hey! So, what did you want to show me?"

[runs]

"You go first."

She crosses her arms over her chest. "After all you made me wait."

[dangerouslyinlove]

Ryoji chuckles. "Yeah, ok." Though, if he has to talk about it, he has to get a bit more serious. "I... met someone like you, in the Underworld. He said one day he just arrived here, without any warning at all. He asked me to tell you to be careful, because if something happens to you, or you die... you might forget where you came from in the first place."

[runs]

She gives Ryoji an incredulous look. "...If I die, I will forget everything. Because I'll be dead."

Someone like her, who just arrived here one day? That one is more curious, though. Someone who delivered a pretty nonsensical warning.

[dangerouslyinlove]

"No, that's..." Ok, he didn't explain that very well. "In the Underworld, you still might remember. And I mean, some of us die and come back anyway." Like him. He is the example here. "But he said one of his friends died and then came back, fully alive, a few days later and... didn't remember them."

[runs]

"...Alive like they had been before? And he's sure that it was the same person?"

That part about becoming like Ryoji ...well, it's not like she doesn't sometimes have something on her shoulder already. It might not be that different. "What's that underworld like?"

[dangerouslyinlove]

Ryoji nods. "Yeah, seemed like it. ...I didn't think to ask if he'd become Bound or anything, but that's still really not something that should happen if he did." Maybe when he can actually get back to the Underworld, he'll ask.

How to explain... "It's... hm. I don't really know how to describe it? It can have some similar features with whatever 'entrance' is near, but it's not anything like this world at all. Very... dead." He seriously can't think of a better description.

[runs]

"I didn't plan on dying anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem." She crosses her arms over her chest and frowns. "What are the other dangerous things that he mentioned?" Everyone here seems to warn her away from something. Don't poke that gear, don't ask that person questions, always with justifications that are more vague than anything. And now this.

"...Does it always look the same?" She has to think of the astral plane, ever changing capable of looking pretty much like anything.

[dangerouslyinlove]

"I don't know," Ryoji says, sighing, "I probably should have asked him more... when I can get back I'll ask again. The only thing he mentioned was running into the wrong thing."

He nods. "Yeah, if you go in through the same entrance. It's... very twisty and hard to navigate, is the big thing, so finding the way in between gate can be really hard."

[runs]

"Not like the astral planes then. They can look like anything.

And you should ask him what the wrong thing is, or I won't know what to avoid." She'll lead him towards downtown, where she knows that angels will probably be floating around.

[dangerouslyinlove]

"Yeah, I will." He'll follow her now, though... that's unfortunately all he can give her on Lirisoir's advice at the moment. "Where are we going?"

[runs]

"Downtown. I want to know if you can see angels."

After all ...well, he has already seen one, most likely. And even if he can't see the gears after that, maybe he can see other angels.

Unless he wanted to be seen, but then... what would that mean?

[dangerouslyinlove]

"There are Angels downtown?" What. Thanks to Tobias, he thinks that they might be what he ran into that one time, but he's never seen them anywhere else before. Why would they be downtown?!

[runs]

"A lot of them. At the wall, too. The person I showed your description to said that that was what you saw, and he said that it's weird that you can't see the gears now.

If you can't see the angels, either... he said that maybe the angel wanted you to see it, or that it was in the process of falling from being an angel, then it wouldn't be weird that you can't see the gears." Because ...something.

[dangerouslyinlove]

Huh. That's way more than Tobias knew about them- who did she ask? (She probably won't tell him, even if he did ask... he wouldn't blame her, either.) "It was trying to stop me from doing something, so maybe that's why it showed itself...?" He has no idea.

[runs]

"But it didn't seem like it was the right person for the job if it couldn't communicate with you.

It's good that you didn't try to fight it." She's been warned about how strong angels are by two people now, and she might not be the most reasonable person at all times, but she's not suicidal. If she bothers an angel, she'll only do it once she knows how to get out of the situation.

[dangerouslyinlove]

"I don't generally try to fight things on first instinct..." He's much more a 'negotiate' kind of person. Which doesn't mean he won't fight, just that it's not the first thing he does.

[runs]

Considering what little she has seen of how Ryoji interacts with the world, she would have been full of disbelief if he'd have cited aggression as anything close to his primary instincts.

"Well, sometimes you have to."