Trial of Trials : Act 2

[thequestgiver]

There's something uneasy that can be felt in the city, and seemingly no end to the rumors springing up in the wake of the downtown explosion that leveled BOARD's headquarters. Stories of an odd sickness where the afflicted suddenly winds up anemic, their blood levels dangerously low, despite feeling fine that morning have already taken root, others of strange animals seen roaming at night, and horrible screams and gunshots in one of the parking garages....

The space where the ill-fated headquarters lays silent, an empty patch of dirt and gravel that seemed to attract those drawn to stories and rumors. Police have already had to shoo away opportunists with metal detectors, hoping to find something interesting in the impressively quickly cleared wreckage, and others have reported something that just feels... wrong, when they walk by the site. The ghosts of those who hadn't made it out of the collapse? Or something else? Noone can really put a finger on it to explain.

And meanwhile, under the cover of shadows, things unknown to those who still walk in the light continue to move. Whispers of the rogue mage and a treasure trove of information, of upsets in the vampire hierarchy, and sworn revenge on the mages who had used one of their own for their gain.

And deep in a hidden lab, BOARD's remains and allies continue to work, twisting all they can get their hands on to create the perfect weapon; made of the very things they wish to cleanse from the world. The loss of the incapacitated vampire elder was only a small one, with how much they had already extracted and drawn from it. And if the rumors of their knowledge being in the hands of their enemies were true? They would just have to speed up their projected timeline. Or simply slow down that of the world. After all, they were mages. Reality bended to their will, not that of those who opposed them....

Comments

[dangerouslyinlove]

Ryoji Mochizuki is not terribly well informed of the current situation.

But then again, he never really is. He's not the type to go in over-prepared, because he tried a couple of times and found out he was totally wrong and the situation called for something different. But those rumors have made their way out of town and onto the Twilight Network, and so he's making his way in, the ghostly specter of a creature with a skull for a face and wings made of coffins floating behind him- for those that can see such things, at least.

Ryoji and Thanatos stop in front of the now very empty patch of land that was the headquarters, looking around. Yup. There are ghosts here. This... could be bad.

Of course, this random kid just standing there and looking very interested in front of the BOARD headquarters is totally not suspicious. Not at all.

[triggerhappytraitor]

Tachibana hadn't meant to make a habit of walking by his former workplace on a regular basis. But he couldn't help but notice how often there was someone there, looking around with far too much interest.

...that this time, it was another kid with a.... spirit? Ghost? Whatever it was that had been following Takeru around. Another like him? Or something-- someone else?

He stands a bit to the side, doing a poor job of attempting to not look like he's peering at the suspicious kid, trying to figure out what was going on now. His magic had purified Tennouji's spirit... hadn't it? Takeru would have said something if it hadn't. Or was there something else lingering at the site of BOARD's wreckage? (or lack there of)

[grapeeater]

Micchy has fled the sewers.

It's not safe there, not even with the local Nosferatu either dead or cleared out. But he's made himself too obvious, so while the more ambitious fledglings keep chasing his trail down there, he's moved, again and again. He's considered moving out of the city, but something inside of him keeps telling him no, he needs to stay.

There's something he has to do, and something he has to find, but he's not sure what it is. He's managed to clean himself up, finding clothing from people either after he's killed them, or simply after they've had too much to drink. Some of it is dirty, but he doesn't care anymore. What he cares about is this gnawing in his brain, threatening to overtake him. What matters is completing his goals... once he figures out what they are.

He won't be found during the day, of course, and if he spots anyone he knows he starts to quietly head in the other direction, but he's largely found around the downtown district or near the edges. Never the residential section, and never anywhere near where his dance team once was.

He can't let them see him. Not like this. Not ever again. None of them.

[dangerouslyinlove]

At night, Ryoji is also out- ghosts can show up pretty much whenever, first of all, and he also wants to get to know the town! Combined, these are very good excuses. Though he's only going to tell most people the second one, and if they can see Thanatos lurking behind him then they probably can guess the first one all on their own.

He's downtown at the moment, and chatty and friendly as he is, of course he's going to talk to clearly agitated and/or anxious man. Why wouldn't he? Maybe he can help! "Hello! Are you from around here?"

[ordinarycitizen]

It's not hard at all, actually, to get down the stairs, squeeze through the cat flap in the house door, and explore the area. The hard part is to do it while "Mum" is too busy or otherwise unable to stop her. She's pretty sure that is the case now, though, and the fact that she's managed to toddle all the way to the next bigger street and is now sitting on the sidewalk, watching everyonething that passes by with bright and interested eyes, seems to give validity to that idea.

Not that her thoughts run that complicated. She mostly was bored and saw her chance to be less bored in a new place that is still mostly empty. And now she is here and waves at Micchy when he walks by and happens to look at her, because she's found that most people respond well to that here.

She doesn't look particularly lost, but then - mask or not, it's pretty clear that she is very, very young.

[morethanashadow]

One of the Changelings of the Spring Court has been largely staying out of the mess- Phillip has mixed feelings about Mages in general, and would have to admit that if he had found out about them before he'd been taken then he might have become one. Magic is cool. ...It's about the only part of going through his Durance that he likes.

But he's been getting updates from Bakura, and he's started to become... worried, about his friend. Phillip is certainly less human than many changelings, but Bakura's teetering riiiight on the edge. So maybe he has to get a bit more involved, find out what's happening on his own. And he's certainly going to try to keep an eye on Bakura's newest source of amusement. If he can find him.

Even for those who can see through the Mask, his appearance is.... somewhat subtle. His ears are pointed, bright blue eyes a bit too wide, but the biggest indication than he's no longer quite human is the pallor of his skin. It is fair too pale to belong to anything alive. And yet somehow when he turns and smiles, he's charming enough to push past that. "Looking for something?"

[chalicejoker]

Of course the Summer King see through the Mask. Behind his own, he's a green skinned, fanged wind oni-looking kind of guy, constantly followed around by a warm breeze that's likely more him than his corporeal form.

He is also eternally grumpy, at least as far as anyone in the Courts knows, and he's not exactly thrilled to be engaged in sudden conversation, even if it's possible he might hear something useful from this exchange. "What makes you say that?"

[ordinarycitizen]

The person he addressed, a rather tired looking woman in her early forties pushing a stroller - the occupant can't be seen because a blanket has been placed over the open section to protect the child from the sun - and lugging along a suitcase with the other hand, stops and looks up at him.

And then pauses. But finally, she nods. "Ah, yes, actually. You don't happen to know where Riverside Road is? I thought I could walk from the bus stop, but I must have gotten turned around..."

[kamenwriter]

Is this the right source? The young man in the hot pink shirt with the laptop, sitting at a table in a low-key cafe? He's not making a very concentrated effort to hide the BOARD information present on his screen, as he types in a second window, nor the barely-healed bite wounds on his neck. Not that anyone else is paying them any mind; after all, a small Mask been placed over it, preventing anyone else from seeing it (and making it very hard for Kotaro to check if it's getting infected or not) even as he keeps lifting his hand to gingerly rub them.

He's looking very intense right now, as he types at lightning speed. Except for the moment when a waitress comes by, to take his order for a fresh glass of milk to top him up.

[ninjayeehaw]

After that first Trial attack, Kinji is slow to come back off edge. Such a horrific attack, something explicitly designed to murder him, made from him, was something he wasn't about to forget in a hurry. Nor was he keen to let it go - even if he and Tachibana had killed it the once, that had been on its second appearance; there wasn't a doubt in Kinji's mind that there would be more in progress, even if they didn't specifically include his DNA.

So he's been on the lookout the entire time. He tries to be lowkey about it, lest his menacing werewolf aura out him as such, but those who are sensitive to it won't have much difficulty in feeling it. He's mostly just patrolling the city on foot; more than a few times he swings past BOARD's previous location, but more or less he's simply around, prowling like the apex predator he is in a wide radius around the storage lots he's claimed as his territory.

Don't mind him looking intensely out of alleyways when he's not sitting in the weak sun eating hamburgers by the truckload. All this fighting recently has taken a huge chunk out of his energy stores.

[triggerhappytraitor]

It was rather hard to miss Kinji's patrolling, and even Tachibana could guess the reason behind it. There's two take-out cups from a near by chain in his hands as he approaches Kinji on his lunch break.

"The coffee I owe you," he greeted, holding one out.

[morethanashadow]

Phillip tends to not to mess with the werewolf population on a daily basis- or most of the time, really. Obviously, he sticks mostly to Changelings, and humans when he can, but things have gotten increasingly complicated. And it's not like he didn't know who and what people were before. Just that he tried to stay out of there way unless there was something in particular he wanted to figure out. Or they were fun.

This whole... debacle has made a bunch of them much more noticeable, however. And who is he to ignore one of those very notable pieces just hanging out in an alley? ...With a ridiculous amount of hamburgers? Sure, ok, that's probably fine. "You alright, there?" he asks, leaning against the other side of the alleyway. Seriously you look kind of insane.

[through_fire_be_reborn]

Sitting at one of the outdoor tables at a local upscale cafe sits a familiar figure. Oddly familiar in that way that the face is almost the same, but a light, pleasant smile rests on the man's lips as he lightly brushes his perfectly styled hair from the shades hiding his eyes, adjusting the collar of his red leather jacket. Unlike when Tachibana was attempting to look utterly different to throw BOARD off his trail, there isn't a hint of discomfort in this man's posture and frame. To all eyes, he just appears to be a normal man enjoying an evening coffee as he checks his phone.

Well. To almost all eyes. Some may notice that there's something... odd about him; an intensity that seems to draw people in and leave them enchanted by more than his looks and manners. And that he seems to be looking for something. Or perhaps someone....

[chalicejoker]

Hajime wouldn't be worth his salt as the Summer King if he didn't pick up something odd here. And there is so much odd here to pick up on.

The man sitting at the table will notice an unseasonably warm, almost angry-seeming breeze blowing by his table.

[morethanashadow]

Phillip doesn't know what he's looking at, but he doesn't like it. Not one bit.

Whatever it is isn't quite a Fetch, but it is close enough to make his skin crawl and powerful enough to freak him the hell out. He isn't a fighter, though, he wins whatever he gets involved in by trickery and cleverness more than any kind of brute strength. So what can he do here...

A bit of charming later, Phillip has a waiter's outfit and is walking out to the table with a muffin. "Here you are, sir," he says with a smile, and as he offers it to the man, he should be seen as whoever he's looking for. Phillip knows this is a terrible idea, but he wants to know what's going on, and this is probably the best way to find out. If he doesn't get killed.

[ninjayeehaw]

When Kinji sees the man, he almost does a double take - the only thing stopping him is how obvious it would be. And he's got the sneaking suspicion he should attempt to be low-key about this.

He's upwind of the man, so the man's scent on the gentle breeze is being blown in the exact wrong direction for him to get a read off of, but he's also not stupid. He pulls out his phone and turns his back on the man; and to anyone watching him, he's just making a casual show out of grooming himself in the camera like he's about to take a selfie. Except when he does take the shot, it's all the strange man with Tachibana's face, taken over his shoulder and sent to the real one.

'We're finding long lost siblings all over the place. First mine, now yours.'

[ordinarycitizen]

A child that was sitting in a stroller by a nearby table where two middle-aged women chat eagerly is certainly drawn in by him. It only takes her a moment to slip out of the straps holding her in place and then she's wandering over, one hand stuck in her mouth, to have a closer look at him.

So for everyone who can't see through masks, a cute three year old is wandering around (to those who can the cuteness factor probably depends on their opinion about woodlice) and there are eyes from a few tables watching this encounter with more or less attention because that's just an easy thing to have your eyes drawn towards when you don't have an engaging conversation or book.

"Hello."

Look who else is making poor life choices!

[kamenwriter]

There's one figure who's been chilling out at the cafe for even longer than the fashionable look-alike has been; a youngish man with a laptop, its screen open quite blatantly on a heaping pile of BOARD documents. Files, photos, all sorts of references for the pages of his own book he's working on.

It probably wasn't the best idea for Kotaro to be sitting out in the public eye with such information, especially when most of it was gotten by digging through what he could access of BOARD's database with Hirose, but he's good. He's got his glass(es) of milk, he's got the good luck charm Bakura gave him, he's set.

[peaceintheworld]

The cafe where the oddly familiar figure sits is in far nicer a neighborhood than she tends to frequent, but as one of the few real doctors in the Freehold, she quite frequently finds herself making house calls. She's on her way to the train station and thus back to her office when she passes by, and it's by chance that she catches a glimpse of the strangely magnetic man. If he hadn't had such magnetism, her eye might have slipped over him, but she lingers a moment more, curiosity piqued... and then caught, because that is Tachibana's face.

She slows, she stops, she stares for perhaps too-long a moment, and she turns away as though flustered, mind racing to try and make sense of this. Tachibana had told her of a creature copying the power of other supernatural beings, but this... without deliberating further, she slips her phone from her purse and sends Tachibana a quick text.

Please tell me that you haven't had a haircut since I last saw you.

[ninjayeehaw]

It's a fair while after Kinji's first encounter with the bastard monster wearing Tachibana's face now, and despite how much that meeting threw Kinji off-balance, he can't focus on it too much after he's done meeting up with Tachibana himself about it - it was almost sundown, which meant even if it could resist the sun, now it would be even more powerful. His plans to stalk the guy would have to wait until morning.

In the meantime, he's just going to do what he normally does: patrol the lot his storage unit was located in. After Tachibana's debacle, he was keen to not let anyone near his small, highly toxic assortment of supplies. So he wanders the aisles between the units, human-shaped, with an almost relaxed swing to his step that entirely belies how hard he's pushing all his senses to detect even the most inconspicuous presence.

[ordinarycitizen]

I.

In the early evening, after sunset but while the sky is still light from the gassy giant behind the horizon, a mother and her three-year old child are the only occupants of a small playground in a small park somewhere in a better residential area of the city.

Those who can see through masks will notice something about the picture not being quite right - unlike the woman*, who for all that a fae can tell is a perfectly normal baseline human, the child is definitely a Changeling, hair, back and legs being covered with what looks like the back segment of the woodlouse, tiny grey antennae poking out from her forehead, a grey, chitin-like texture to the skin where her body seems otherwise normal and a grey tone to her body all over. Which doesn't keep her from acting like a perfectly regular three-year old that is currently sitting on one of the toddler swings and being pushed into motion by the woman.

Who will look up and greet everyone who walks by with a brief smile and a nod, though tension can be scented or, for the very perceptive, otherwise noticed on her, and generally just watch the area closely. Those who have powers other than that of the fae that let them recognize fae beings will notice that this woman is indeed not as normal as she looks. There is something distinctly fae about her, it's just concealed from those who are in contact with the Wyrd.

[*Not that the woman is really a normal human. Magic forms of perception that aren't fae magic will reveal her to be something else.

True Sight will show that Louise isn't made of bone and flesh but of A) primarily teeth. Primary, secondary, even the odd set of tertiary teeth, made of gold or other replacement materials, the only thing they all have in common is that they aren't pretty - malformed, or with cavities or fillings, or modded (filed into pointiness, etc). B) dentistry tools (made of wood, stone, bronze - notably nothing approaching iron) from all ages of history, likewise ones that look damaged, worn out or tarnished and C) dental floss.]


II.

A bit later, they're on their way. The child sometimes walks, sometimes sits in her stroller, and they make their way downtown towards the local Freehold.

Whenever the girl is out of the stroller, she might escape to the left or the right for a moment to stare at strangers with intense interest before her mother is at her side and scoops her up to place her back in the stroller, apologizing for the child having bothered them - "sorry, she's just having a phase where she likes to look at what people are wearing, I hope she didn't bother you".

Eventually, they reach the freehold, though, or rather, stand a small distance outside of the location they were given, and Louise picks up her phone and calls a number. Someone should pick up, she was told, most likely Summer court, most likely someone higher up. Nobody really could give her specifics, though.

Their case is a bit unusual, after all, and thus the fetch tries to not throw nervous glances around too obviously and almost jumps when Lottie climbs out of the stroller and wraps her arms around her leg, trying to comfort her. She only manages to force herself not to because having Lottie recoil from her is really the absolutely last thing she can use at this moment. Good first impressions, as good as they can be...

II

[chalicejoker]

"This is Aikawa." The voice on the other end of the line sounds like it belongs to a slightly irritated man who maybe doesn't have time to be answering the phone right now but is doing so anyway. There's an unspoken don't waste my time here.

[uzoda]

I

Kenzaki had not fully understood what it was that he had escaped from, which is perhaps why he has already dared return to the city. But he had finally managed to clear out the fog in his head to the point that he felt fully himself again, only to learn that BOARD's offices were simply gone. Being himself, loyal and brave and more than a little foolhardy, he has ventured back to the city to find out what the hell is going on.

He's not the first rubbernecker at the cordoned-off remnants of BOARD's headquarters, and he's likely not going to be the last, but he's at least making some effort to look benign. His old familiar company jacket has been traded in for a hooded sweatshirt, and he has forgone sunglasses. And with a light Mind enchantment around him to encourage the mundane and the sleeping to pay him no mind, it would take someone special or supernatural to actually give half a damn that he's looking into this. That, he's expecting, though. And he's alright with that. After everything, he almost wants a bit of a fight....

II

Later, he can be found in a convenience store in an entirely different neighborhood, grimacing and muttering apologies as he picks through every last little bit of change in his wallet. "Sorry, sorry... I know I've got enough, here... no, no, can't use the card, long story, just... I know there's more in here..." Sure, he could just make them forget he was even here and take what he wanted, but that was a gross abuse of what magic was meant for. He wouldn't dare.

[triggerhappytraitor]

Leg patched up but still a touch stiff, Tachibana is picking up the groceries that he had been attempting to get before everything had gone sideways that night when he hears a familiar voice and all but freezes. Was-- was that--

...that goddamned idiot what was he--?!

Glancing down at his basket, he curses under his breath and sets it down, heading for the counter. Tossing a few bills on the counter, he nods to the cashier. "Don't worry about the change." And with a small, very familiar glare that implied he would not take any arguing the point, turns to Kenzaki. "We're already late, let's go."

And with that, he's heading out the door.

Kenzaki's here I can't not

[kamenwriter]

Kotaro might have gotten himself tangled in a Promise and gotten way, way deeper in all this than he could have anticipated, but he is still otherwise very mundane, and so Kenzaki's mild enchantment is, currently, working.

But he's still standing as close to the ruins as the cordoning will allow, adjusting a backpack on his shoulders; and since it's not guarded, and there's no other people around (that he can actually notice) he's going to quickly vault over it and go for the building's prior location.