T - Lauryn, Bee, Xenon - Complete

[Nathalia]

((As Zhenya goes to leave, his paw hits something...slimy.

Leaping Snot: Eugh! What have you put your hand in!?
A small puddle of semi-clear goo will shoot up the arm of the SD in question and squirrel its way into their nostrils. Once inside, they will realize their curse and their new ability.
Once a week, they are now capable of whispering "sneeze" and causing an opponent's sinus cavities to bloat horribly with an overload of nasty dripping mess. The mucus will flow from them freely, obscuring their vision, making it hard to breathe, and making their heads pound unmercifully for a full ten minutes until they drain.
However, the caster will forever suffer a partially blocked and mildly runny nose. It will never cease and cannot be cured by anyone but a practiced curse-breaker. An unfortunate and endlessly irritating side-effect.))


~Nathalia

[Lauryn de Vampyre]

((*falls out of the chair, laughing* Leaping Snot?!!?!? Oh good LORD, Nat! I would love to see inside your brain!))

Bristol watched as Catastrophe lowered her mouth to the back of his Mother's neck and shut that oh-so-sharp beak lightning fast. Another tear ran down his bloody cheek as he watched his Mother's body grow limp as his life was snuffed out.

"Goodbye.... Mom..." he whispered softly.

The Dual-Breed stared at the dead Tiger for what felt like hours, unable to move. His stomach and internal organs had splattered outward in a small explosion, covering not only himself but the floor and cupboards of the kitchen. It was only when another small child came crashing into the room that Bristol could move at all. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion and felt as though he were trying to run through waist-high water.

"My M-Mother," Bristol choked out, "was in horrible agony. He asked this one here to help end his s-suffering," he explained, motioning to Cat. The Mix lifted his head and looked at the odd little child with the glassy eyes, and saw only someone who had helped his Mother when he could not.

"Thank you, for helping," he said, stifling a sob.

It was as he turned to take a step that Bristol felt all the blood drying in his fur along with other solid bits. Swallowing back a bit of bile, he looked at the other two in the room.

"I... I think I should clean up." Walking over to the sink, he turned on the faucets and was relieved to see clear water pouring out. With the water working in this house a shower was what the "new born" was after.

"I'll be quick. I just have to... have to get this stuff... I have to get clean." He said before nearly running out of the kitchen, into the hallway and up the stairs.

The bathroom was easy to find but there wasn't a towel in sight. Seeing a door about half the size of the others, he opened it to discover the linen pantry. Bristol took a deep breath, not realizing it was a mistake until he realized he was breathing in the smell of the gore that clung to his fur. The sob he'd held back earlier poured out of him, and through tear-drowned eyes the Mix began pulling towel after towel out of the closet into heaps on the floor.

It just wasn't fair! Why did his Mother have to die in order for him to be born? From the knowledge he'd absorbed while forming inside of the Tiger, he knew his hadn't been a normal birth. Most children don't kill their parents when being born.

"I'm a murderer!" he shrieked, flopping himself on the pile of towels.

[Nathalia]

((While yanking towels out of the linen cupboard, a small item is jarred loose and falls gently on top on Bristol's head.

Small Brass Handbell: This tiny brass handbell may not look
like much, but it has a nice ring and smells, oddly enough, like
almonds. It will only ever work for the first person to pull it out of
its little black case and once chosen, the scent will begin to
dispense.
Once a week, the owner can ring this bell and it will call forth a
small, unhappy-looking creature with a pumpkin, carved like a
jack-o'lantern, where its head should be. The head is held on tightly
with living vines and the inside of its head glows brightly as though
lit from within. The creature cannot speak and cowers when spoken to
as though it expects to be struck. It can, however, write and
understands speech perfectly. Its body is currently that of an Animal-formed Morganberry Canine...it can switch out bodies, but does not like to do so.
Capable of teleporting (though it cannot take anyone with it), it is
highly useful for delivering messages. It takes very well to kindness,
has no name (yet), and will become painfully devoted if treated well.

((Downstairs, it would also seem as though the doors and windows are once again open and people may come and go as they please. Be careful though...it's awfully odd out there, today.

Your goal is to head towards the pub called the "Fallen Wing", it will take about an hour or two to get there from here. See if the people inside can't tell you anything about what's going on, seeing as everywhere else seems deserted...seems to be...it's the logical place to stop in.))

~Nathalia

[carcinoGeneticist]

This was just... this was just too weird. Too damn weird for words. Sergei was feeling more uncomfortable now than he could ever remember feeling in his entire life, even more uncomfortable than the time he'd looked at the King of Hearts and had a sudden recollection of the face he made during... private... moments. He grabbed at his own forearms, ruffling the fur and trying to shake the heebie-jeebies that had settled over him. He stared at Bristol, then at Cat. Words refused to come to him.

Abruptly, he turned to leave and find his new friend, not able to stomach the look of the Tiger's corpse. He ran into the other boy on his way back to the living room and shivered.

"Mr. Tiger is dead," he said, voice strangely soft and steady. "He has a... I don't even know. A son. Don't go in there. Cat" There were thoughts filling Sergei's mind now, unpleasant ones. He and his siblings had killed their father on the way out... Had it been like Bristol's birth? "I don't trust her, but we should take Cat and... and the baby? We should take them with us and go. Find out if we can get out."

Catastrophe stared at the Lizard-Cat but said nothing, only clacked her beak again. She had killed the man. He'd asked her to. She gave a small nod when he said he was going to clean up. Then she looked down at the Tiger. It was quiet in the kitchen, and she was alone. The little biped was gone, too.

Taking the opportunity, Cat started to feed. She would gulp down the larger strips of flesh, not bothering to chew and not stopping until her stomach felt mostly full. It wasn't the best meal she'd ever had, and she was far from satisfied, but the pangs of hunger no longer stabbed at her.

Then she stepped out into the main room. "We leave now?" She asked, either oblivious or uncaring of the fact that her off-white coat was covered in blood.

[Bee]

"He's a double," Zhenya said, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears. Stuffy like a kid with allergies, threaded with a strange kind of detachment. This must have been what his detective felt like all the time. It was easy to be him, kind of, except that it kind of wasn't--but he didn't want to have to face the real picture of what he'd heard. Then he was just a dazed and terrified little kid.

"He already admitted he's a murderer," he said, gently. "Being contrite about the crime doesn't change the crime. We need to figure out why he did it, why he's here, what his endgame is. He's not a normal baby. The answer is in there somewhere." They needed to leave, yes, and find some place where--"Or out there somewhere."

The Plot, yes. He had forgotten about that. There was another story, the one he liked better. He guessed he would have to make it work with the story that had been forced upon them. Maybe the terrible girl and the shadow double were important Plot Points, too. Zhenya just needed to put them together. He couldn't think about his own mind-numbing fear. He had a case to solve.

Then Cat came back, drenched in blood. Zhenya sniffed in surprise and coughed. Then he vomited.

"We leave now," he confirmed, dizzily.

[Lauryn de Vampyre]

No sooner had his body landed on the scratchy towels, did Bristol feel something hard hitting his head. It made a smart 'ding' before landing on the cotton pile. Ow!

He picked up the object and rolled it over in his clawed paws. It was made out of metal and there was this little hanging piece inside of it that made the dinging noise when the object was shaken...

Bell... he realized slowly. This object was called a bell. Grabbing the metal thing and a towel, Bristol finally turned on the shower and washed off all the blood and gore from bursting out of his Mother. He sobbed quietly into the streaming water, letting all his grief, anguish and guilt wash away as much as possible with everything else.

The Mix toweled off, shaking violently and sprayed the room with clean water droplets before grabbing the bell he found and making his way back downstairs. The house seemed to be empty, for now, so surely no one would mind him taking a bell. Right?

He came downstairs just in time to see one of the little ones vomiting up on the floor. Taking a step back he looked at the other two, noticing Cat was covered in blood. Thinking nothing of it, and certainly not thinking that his Mother had just become a snack for the cannibal, Bristol pointed to Zhenya.

"Is he okay?"

[carcinoGeneticist]

It was hard to focus on what Zhenya was saying, initially, but once Sergei remembered their talk of Plot and Detectives, the boy latched onto it like a liferope. He needed something that could pull him out of the reality of their situation, of the dead man in the kitchen, the girl with lifeless eyes who looked as though she'd been involved in a tragic accident at the butcher's shop, of the adult-baby who had caused the man's death, and of the eyeball that had forced itself into his hand. Subconsciously, Sergei closed said hand a little tighter, not quite ready to show the others what had happened to him.

"Right," he confirmed, nodding his head in agreement with the other boy's summary of the situation. "We'll keep him with us, then. Just to keep an eye on him."

That was the moment that Catastrophe reentered the room, followed soon after by Bristol. His own stomach churned terribly, and Zhenya's purging almost sent him over the edge. "Let's get out of here. We're going to find... someone."

Vomiting? There was a lot of that going on now. Catastrophe stared at the bat-hybrid with a stern expression on her face. Her own belly was so wonderfully full, she couldn't imagine why anyone would want to lose that feeling... It just didn't make sense. She turned to face the odd hybrid, blinking her glassy eyes at him and then shrugging. His fur was nice and clean, now. How had he managed it, so fast? "He fine. Maybe a little sick, is all. We go now."

She turned to follow Sergei with a little flick of her tail, stepping out into the alleyway. How strange that the door would open now, when it had been so adamantly shut before. Maybe she'd just been imagining things before, and they'd never really been locked in? "...where we go?"

[Bee]

Zhenya sniffled again. The combined feeling of snot and the faint aftertaste of vomit was nearly enough to make him puke again. But Sergei was on board with his idea and he needed to be thinking logically. It was difficult.

"We should...go to where there are more people," he said, starting off uncertain and ending more firmly. "Maybe someone else can tell us something we don't know. The streets are pretty empty but...maybe an inside place."

Where did people all like to go to be together? He thought about this for a long moment. Then--of course. He could picture the scene in his head. A dim little pub of questionable repute, filled with men of even more questionable repute. The sound of laughter was as loud as the sound of skulls cracking on tables. The barmaids were all smiles and friendly hands, though why people would like to be touched so much Zhenya had no idea. The image was distracting and alluring and having a goal kept his mind off so much else he didn't want to think about.

"We should go to a pub," he decided. "That's always where people get information, and maybe, if we play our cards right, we can meet a couple of saucy dames."

[Lauryn de Vampyre]

Bristol looked back towards the Kitchen - the place of his birth. It seemed wrong to let his Mother just lay there. The Tiger should be brought home to his family - my family too..., he thought - but the others were determined to leave. It sounded as though something wrong was happening right now.

"Can we... come back later, to get my Mum?" he asked, hopefully as they made their way out of the building and into the open air. Did the air normal smell like heady spices? The smell made him feel kind of, well... off. Bristol looked behind him at the still open door, imagining his Mother's body lying broken and open on the Kitchen floor. Unable to stop it, silent tears streamed down his face.

Following the others, he took a few more steps away from the dwelling. A pub. Well, that sounded like a reasonable assumption. From the knowledge he'd gained while growing in Lachlan, there was always somebody around at a pub. The Mix couldn't help but snort in a small laugh, though, when the young one mentioned saucy dames. Wasn't he just a little too small for that kind of thinking yet?

Well, he thought to himself, I'm less than a few hours old but I'm already an adult. Apparently, weirder things did happen.

Taking a steadying breath, Bristol forced himself not to think about his Mother's body (for now - resolving to come back after whatever this was became resolved) and followed the children down the street towards revelry section of the town where all the pubs and inns were located.

"You guys keep mentioning something being not right. What's going on?" He might have gained general knowledge from his Mother, but had no clue that anything was amiss.

[Nathalia]

((The streets outside still smell awkwardly spicy and strange.

The skies have grown darker and it seems almost as though there's something stirring in the streets...something dark and very low to the ground. Maybe it's just a bunch of common rats?

There are voices from further down the street, almost as though there's a small horde of people speaking...though none can be found.
A brisk walk will bring you to a parting of the streets, come to a consensus about where you will go.
Choose only once, the group will feel oddly compelled to stick together.

1. To the restaurant at the end of the street. It's all dark, but maybe there's someone in there? It smells kind of bad at the door, though.

2. The street to the far left, oddly bright, in this light, and the smell seems to wane a bit, but maybe it's a trap...

3. The street to the far right, it smells pretty awful down there...and there's some weird noises you can't quite place coming from it.))


~Nathalia