Lacie let out a small sigh of relief, she could at least for the moment continue to keep this a secret. Maybe long enough to even figure out how to change back. She turned around and limped slowly back towards the door, she studied the letter for a moment and then picked it up. The thief then headed back to her kitchen table, collapsing in one of the seats and reading the note that her landlord had left for her.
You take Mr. Dewey's note and sit down at the table, having a good look at its contents. Looks a bit hastily written, probably just scribbled outside your door just now. It brings news.
I caught you on tape
Know what you are all about
Melting through a door
It's all good, don't worry, but
Must negotiate new rentThis fails to reassure you in any way, as Mr. Dewey's explicit approval is not quite what you've been missing in your life presently. That, and landlords mentioning rent is almost universally ominous. Doubly so because it means you possibly have to talk to him
again.
Yvonne quickly tells her mom she needs to get something, and starts running off to the hardware store.
Your mother's probably quite surprised that you need to run off so soon again, but your need is a bit too pressing to ignore. You could be doing so many things now. As you move along through the streets, the sun seeps into your bones and you feel a coldness building up within you, spreading from the inside out. It is a pleasant coldness, pure and clear, like an extra strong breath mint for the soul. You wander into what you assume is a hardware store judging by the hammer on the sign outside. It's had a hard time, this hardware store, what with the giant root that appears to have impaled it right down the middle, lifted the whole building slightly as well as tilted it considerably. The windows are boarded up, though the door still looks open, so you wander in. You've shopped at worse.
Within the main room you find that it looks... a bit strange. The walls are undulating, and you get the sense that they are squirming and trying to escape your sight no matter where you look. The ceiling is slowly bending downward, seemingly to get a better look at you. And the floor is swirling, paying your arrival absolutely no mind. All around you seem to be tools of various kinds, many of them stabbed or chopped into heavily abused mannequins that appear to be crying softly, many of them placed in unusual and, you're sad to say, somewhat suggestive poses.
Okay, maybe you haven't really shopped at worse. But there does seem to be a lot of stuff you can use in here. And nobody's around, so you think you could get away with borrowing some of this stuff. The mannequins would certainly appreciate it, looks like.
What did they use to set it up. Depending on the program, he could trace the IP address. Then use one of those phone GPS setups for overprotective mothers to find them.
You actually arranged this via a series of businesslike emails and bank transfers. Heck, they're still in your inbox. Only thing you didn't get is a receipt. Looks like a legit email, too, though the way it appears to belong to a man named Seymour Dickman leads you to think that maybe your assessment of legit emails needs some work. Despite this, Mr. Dickman does appear to be an actually existent individual who lives in Edwardstown. He appears to work at a used car dealership over in Xanadu, which is pretty far off, but okay.
You found Mr. Dickman through the Deep Web, to further the setup. They've got places for this sort of thing in there. They're pretty deep in there, buried under a thick layer of what you think may have been extremely illegal pornography, but they're in there. And boy are you starting to regret going in there to begin with, considering how absolutely useless your powers are.
"Why dont we shine a light down and find out?" replies Steven in a somewhat out of breath manner. "Just let me catch my breathe first."
After a quick breather Steven beckons for Z to come down the stairs and help him survey the carnage caused by his panicked rampage using the torch function of his smartphone.
You enter the basement once more after taking a precious couple of breaths of air that doesn't smell like a greatest hits compilation of all the worst things you can do with a man and his internal organs, shining a light from your smartphone. What you see is the residue, now greatly disturbed and pinkish in places, and as you move the small bit of light around you get the sense that you are about to be jump-scared by the thing you just blew up. However, it seems that your explosions did the trick, and nothing tries to eat you. Z looks over your shoulder for a little bit, then walks back toward the door. You are about to ask him if that's all, but then he flips the light switch.
The basement starts to look even worse. There used to be furniture, glass, probably quite a few bodies in here. Not anymore, though. Whatever was in here is now just bits and bobs, shards and dust. The walls and the ceiling look dangerously cracked from your rampage, and whatever it was in here that tried to mess with you has been reduced to an evenly distributed paste as far as you can tell. What the original color of the walls was, you cannot say anymore. All just blood and unidentified white stuff now.
In all this, your eye is drawn to a particular section of wall. Your blasts appear to have broken a small panel there which appears to have been concealing a miniature safe of some kind. Wonder what that's for.
"Solidly trashed. Nothing moving. Room and door still in one piece," Z lists off, then looks at you. "Nicely done. I'll clean up the rest tomorrow."
Z turns slowly and walks out of the basement, leaving slightly pinkish footprints behind him as he goes up the stairs.
(Not enough time to RP at the moment, but I don't want to hold you up any further)
Follow the woman. If she provides with me beer, continue previous action.
You follow silently, and the woman continues onward, leading you out of the fringe of the Low Fields and over to the deathly silent suburb of Arkwood, where a small gas station waits on a half-deserted road, flanked by tall pines on both sides. You slink after her until she motions you to stop a short distance away, proceeding forward on her own.
"I'll... be right back, 'kay? And then I'll get you that beer," she says faintly, her eyes wandering over where you think you are, failing to make sense of what she is seeing, undisguised confusion blotting out all other expression. With that she disappears inside the station's adjunct convenience store, and you can only vaguely make out her shape through the window as she goes further in, leaving you outside to wait for her.
Time passes slowly, and you feel yourself flowing every which way, needing to collect yourself every few minutes or so. It becomes more physically tiring each time you have to do it as well.
Vel gets up and grabs his laptop, the object especially suited for lounging. May as well catch up on webcomics if sleep doesn't wish to come.
You go on a mildly amusing archive binge of a comic you started reading once, but never finished. You read for a while, and when it occurs to you that you could be doing something else. You notice that the outside looks pretty gray now, probably raining a bit. A quick gander at the clock indicates that you've spent, er... eight hours on this.
Not your longest archive binge by any means, but respectable enough. Used up quite a bit of time. And you do feel much better now.
So you've lost a decent number of hours, caught up on a respectable enough webcomic and don't feel like absolute shit anymore. And it's verging on evening, too. So it's like you slept and procrastinated at the same time, which is just about an ideal a use of time as one can imagine. Time is your most abundant resource, after all.
Author
Topic: Come On Down To Edwardstown: A Worm-Inspired RP (9/9) (Read 16499 times)