Kitty, Harps, Lucca, Lauryn

[Harpsdesire]

"La-la Land?" Cal tilted his head to one side. That was a realm he'd never heard of. He would make a point to look for a book on the subject later, when Cat was found and the the off-smell had faded away. This Eldy was turning out to be a wealth of new ideas.

Luckily, the little boy was distracted before he had time to start questioning Eldy about the mysterious place Kamina and Cat went to. There were stores just over there. Unlocked, unwatched stores. Maybe one was a bookstore! A sudden wave of almost painful desire came over him as he thought about beautiful, beautiful books. Books would make him feel safer, and the smell of them would cover the scary way the city smelt. He trembled slightly, torn between desire to stay with the group and desire to see if any of the stores had books that he could steal.

Eventually he gave in to his obsessive nature and trotted towards the goodwill store. The other store certainly didn't have books, but this one might. They would be used books, which didn't look as good, but smelled better and still had all the book-words inside of them. Unless a page was ripped out. He couldn't love a book with a ripped out page, no matter how sorry he felt for it. "Yes, we look in here!" His Caracal-tufted ears tipped back a moment as he belatedly remembered what he was really supposed to be looking for. Look for Cat, he reminded himself, then look for books. It was a happy thing that at the moment he could do both at once.

[Lucca]

Eldy looked over towards the stores they all seemed to be focusing on. She shrugged. "Worth a look." The goodwill sounded promising, especially since Kamina did like to look at clothing. Even in a Biped, she wasn't sure the little girl would ever be able to wear any of the pretty dresses she liked, though...not with that funky thing on her back. Trying to bring this up in the past had only ever gotten her dirty looks from her sister, though. And the goodwill was still a decent place to check out.

She glanced aside at the colorful man...Nova, was it? Casanova. Hah. Amusing. He seemed rather lively despite the atmosphere. As the odd little kid hurried towards the store, Eldy followed, tail thrashing. The others, she assumed, would follow as well, and the store would be searched quite quickly with four of them in there. Pushing past the broken door, Eldy peered into the shop, and sniffed around. It was hard to smell -anything- over that horrible, nasty smell that pervaded the city. Was it just her or was it getting worse?

Wrinkling her nose, Eldy walked in, looking around. There were used things of every type littering tables and shelves, mostly clothes, but also a number of toys and books. Keeping alert for any sign of life, Eldy went up to one of the tables and began to paw through the stacks of clothes. An ugly sweater, a mismatched sock, an actually rather lovely little dress that her niece would have liked...she wasn't sure what she was looking for, precisely, but sometimes you could find some treasure among all the trash in a place like this.

[Lauryn de Vampyre]

(Kitty, you would find it amusing that Lariel is getting jealous of Eldy right now. XD)

Lariel kept scanning the streets as the four of them made their way over to the open Goodwill store. It was then that she noticed the store wasn't open, but the door was just barely attached by warped hinges. The fur on the back of her neck stood on end and her fins began expanding in agitation on their own. Taking a deep breath, she concentrated on the feeling of lighting up the orange/yellow ends of her fins.

Soon a warm glow was cast around her, and even though the light made her feel very slightly better she couldn't help but notice that as the sky grew more and more dark, the smell - whatever that god awful stench was - was getting worse. What the Suits was going on!

Lariel went to follow the others through the 'open' door of the store. "Ugh!" she grunted, for a moment thinking something had grabbed her from behind. Getting ready to call to the others she tried turning around, only to feel the heat of embarrassment crawl up her cheeks as she realized her extended fins had gotten caught in the doorway.

Hoping no one had seen her, she relaxed the fins as far as she could get them and kept them close to her back. The isles in the store were small and had a bunch of breakable things around. Even though the door suggested the place looked ransacked anyway, Lariel didn't want to add to the damage.

Ransacked. Lariel realized she was right. There were items and clothing littered all over the floor. It was as though a small tornado had come into the store, intent on destruction and disarray. "Why would anyone mess up this kind of store, if they were stealing?" she asked aloud, fingering a few pieces of clothing still on the racks as she passed them by. If someone had wanted to steal something, they could have left the rest of the store in order and attracted less attention.

Looking up to make sure the others weren't too far away, the Bobcat headed towards the back of the store, taking her glowing light with her. Though, with the light of Nova's flaming wings the store was still well-lit. The Bobcat's gaze passed by row after row of random items; some untouched and some laying broken on the floor. Her eyes noticed a slightly ajar door in the back of the building. Could it be the office?

With the other three still occupied, Lariel made her way to the small room and had to duck her head lest the silver crown get embedded in the wooden frame. Shit, she wasn't used to being this big! The entire world seemed a bit smaller now she had mastered her BiPed form, and add to that the size of her mutation fins and the silver crown on her head....and she just began feeling like a freak.

Physically shaking the thoughts out of her head, Lariel peered into the back room. As she stuck her nose further in, something ran from between her feet. Letting out a few unlady-like curses, she turned just in time to see a small shadow run towards the open front door of the store. She wanted to chase after it, but that horrible smell was so much less inside, and the Bobcat wasn't exactly ready to go back out into it yet.

She was just about to go talk to the others about the small shadow figure she had seen when light from her fins gleamed against something in the office. Pushing the door further open, she stepped inside and noticed the office was just as messy as the rest of the store. Papers were littered everywhere, drawers open, a beverage spilled across the desk.

Lariel turned on the lamp sitting at the corner of the desk and peered down into the open top right drawer. The shine she had seen was a silver hilt of a long knife. Creasing her brows, she pulled open the drawer and removed the knife. It felt light and cold in her hands. The handle itself was black wrapped in silver filigree and as she withdrew the blade from the small scabbard Lariel's eyebrows raised in delight.

Turning to look behind her she noticed none of the others could see her from their places in the store. Taking the knife with her, she shut the door to the office and made her way quickly to the clothing section. She had her own satchel at home to carry various things with her, but since she and Nova had only planned on going to a cafe, she had left it behind in her apartment. Flipping through quite a few accessories, and nothing in all the Suits would ever make her carry a purse, Lariel finally found a small, black utility belt. Its many small, attached pouches was perfect for carrying various things on her person and best of all it had a larger loop of fabric that would fit the knife through perfectly. Attaching it and fitting the belt to her midsection, Lariel slipped the knife and scabbard through, delighted when it stayed snug and tight.

As she made her way back towards Nova, she only felt a small twinge of guilt for stealing from the store. She had a few coins stashed in the secret compartment of the bell on her necklace and she placed these coins as payment next to the cash register. In all the mess and destruction no one would probably notice a belt and a knife missing, but... She looked at Nova. She didn't want him thinking she was merely a common thief. Though if I would have been alone... she let the thought trail off.

In the discovery of the knife, Lariel had all but forgotten about the small shadow making its escape out of the front door but the smell - that still lingered. Was it just her imagination, or was it getting worse? She took a quick, brief walk around the store and concluded that although there was evidence that something had gone on in the store no hints of exactly what were easily visible.

Walking towards the back of the store again, Lariel made her way behind the counter and looked at the cash register and the items all behind glass. The glass was broken and shattered on the floor, but the items were for the most part undisturbed. She gripped the cash register and shook it as hard as she could, hearing the jingle of coins and the rustle of currency inside.

"Whatever happened here, the place wasn't robbed. So why tear it up?" she asked loudly to the others, looking around to see where each of the three were. "Have you guys found anything? Any sign of the two kids we're looking for?" Lariel turned her attention to the Torque. "Can you smell any traces of... Kamina?"

((o.O;; Holy Suits. Sorry it's so long!! Lariel just kinda ran with it!))

[Nathalia]

((The Goodwill store is predictably shabby, but a good, sturdy shoppe.
Myraids of items from toys to hack inventions, clothes to badly packaged food. The isles are long and thin and lead to a dark back of the store.
There are three doors in the back.
Two are locked...one is not, though that one just appears to be an old office.

The entire store is warmer than it is outside and the gross smell is dimmed by that weird spice smell. Huh, nicer in here, awesome!
Good luck with the shoppe search and...be careful...

Wow though! Lariel seems to have found something!))

Silver knife: This knife delivered only the slightest tingle when touched and might even have been overlooked...
Once a week, this character is now able to cause a light silver rain to fall all around them, regardless of if they are inside or outside. It will rain up to an inch and anyone aside from herself caught in the rain will be "crusted" in silver, limiting their movement a bit, due to skin and fur sticking unpleasantly...until it can be picked off. Though if it's in fur, the fur will need to be shaved, sadly. The rain falls for about 5 minutes, and then stops.


~Nathalia

[Kitty]

He stepped through the doorway carefully, making sure his wings didn't ignite the door frame, and peered around the now dimly lit shop. His eyes roamed over the place, taking in the various items and how they were arranged, Hum, it did look like the place was in a bit of disarray... but it was a goodwill shop in a not so great part of town, so it didn't exactly surprise him. He touched a few random objects before he decided that he'd 'borrow' a few things, and then come back later and give the owner a few coins for the supplies when this was all over with.

If the kids weren't in the two open shops, he knew exactly what they'd end up doing... well, probably end up doing, and busting down doors certainly didn't strike his fancy. No, he'd learned a trick or two from Vesper and he had hands now... so he could totally pull those things off as well.

He found a sturdy looking leather bag and then went through the store and gathered up a few screw drivers, one had a broken handle but hey, the handle wasn't exactly what he needed was it? Then he made his way a little further into the shop and found some hairpins, which he picked up and examed carefully before taking a few of the sturdier ones and stashing them in his bag as well. This way if he couldn't pick the locks, well... he could always just take the doors off the hinges.

Speaking of doors... there were some at the back of the shop. What a great opportunity to test out his new toys! He headed for the door the farthest from the office Lariel had been in and knocked, perking up and ear to listen for anything inside.

Hello, is there anyone in there?

[Lucca]

After thoroughly exhausting the possibility that there would be anything of use in the piles of clothes (and thoroughly exhausting herself as well; she was unused to the heaviness of the air and combined with the tedium of rustling through clothes it was getting to her) Eldy moved on to another shelf, which seemed to contain odds and ends. Emphasis on the odd. Were these some sort of bizzare mad Corvie inventions? There was something she'd almost peg to be a toaster, a broken watch, a sort of walkie talkie (just one, of course) and a small orange something-or-other that made odd whirring noises when she touched it.

She dropped it and continued on. Of course, the rest of them were crashing around the store as well, and Eldy was reminded of what she preferred to search alone. A shadow of some sort darted by her, and Eldy's eyes tracked it as it left. Eh, too small to be a Card. Probably a mouse. She rolled her eyes at Lariel as the Bobcat returned to the room, shaking a can of some sort of unlabelled food and listening to the contents slosh. "Well, maybe it was just Cards fleeing for their lives or something like that." She felt something cold hit her foot and noticed that the can had a leak. Something orange and slimy had just landed on her paw, and Eldy wiped it off on the carpet and set the can aside with a noise of disgust.

"I mean, the city's not exactly sunshine and butterflies today," she continued, poking curiously at something odd and mechanical with a paw. It jumped back off the shelf, bringing several staplers and accompanying staples with it. "And no, of course not, I'll tell you if I smell Kamina. This is just more of that weird spice, in here." Though at least the underlying scent of ick wasn't so bad.

Eldy was about to flick a bouncy looking ball off the table to see how far it would go when she heard Nova yelling. Her ear flattened and she rolled her eyes again. Why did she have to work with these people?

[Harpsdesire]

Cal poked around the shop with concentrated interest. Any Cat in here? No Cat. Any books in here? It didn't seem so at first... He sniffed at the packages of food that sat on a low shelf and made a sound of disgust. Blech. This wasn't the kind of food he liked. He would take nice warm, bloody meat-food over this... this... stale-food any day.

Frustrated by the lack of progress in locating Cat, yet curiously unwilling to leave the group, Cal started digging through the heaps of cast off items in the store. Mostly there were things he had no interest in, like cast iron pans, a curly blond wig and a distinctly musty-smelling pair of trousers. These were tossed into a corner with a most disgruntled frown on the child's face. That was almost as bad as the off-smell!

One corner of the store held toys, which mystified the boy. He had never owned a toy, and while he recognized them as playthings for children from his reading and observation, Cal couldn't entirely grasp the concept. He poked a soft doll that was formed like a Corvistowneian canine with one claw. "What is purpose of this?" he mused to himself. "What purpose?" There were small metal carriages, little horses and dogs of ceramic, some tiny human figures that he could not identify as toy soldiers. A red rubber ball was slightly more understandable, as he had sometimes played with an acorn or a wild sour apple and found that the activity sharpened the reflexes for hunting. A pair of roller skates entirely confused him. He hissed under his breath. "No use, these things."

In the next area a heap of pillows and other bedding, when burrowed into, revealed something that the boy found fascinating. It was slightly warmer toward the back of the shop, and darker, but what light there was gleamed prettily on the brass handle of a large magnifying glass. That was a lovely thing, and its use was fairly clear, although he wasn't sure of its name. "Make things bigger." Cal carried it along with him as he perused the store.

As the child traveled over an area strewn with roll after roll of floral shelf paper, now unrolled and rumpled, he felt something strange underfoot. He pushed the paper hastily to the side to find-- "Books!" There were lovely, precious, much-needed books in this store! He got to them first! There was no one there who seemed to care if he took them! In fact, the adults were taking things too, it looked like. Cal felt strangely euphoric as he regarded the small, eclectic selection of books with a frankly greedy gleam in his clouded eyes.

Most of the books were simply used paperbacks, cheap romance and detective novels with creased paper covers. Regretfully, for every book deserved to be loved, Cal turned the lesser books away, re-covering them tenderly in the shelf paper as if in burial. He would take them all and read them and love them if he had a way of moving and storing a larger collection; it was painful to leave them behind, but sacrifices had to be made. The remaining books, of which there were only four, he would keep. He stroked the cover of one with tenderly with a clawed talon, careful not to scratch the leather binding. Now he would need to find a way to carry them... there was no way to keep all four plus the make-bigger-thing in his beak at once.

The others were taking bags to transport their treasures. This was a sensible idea. He rooted around a bit more before finding a large shoulder bag. That would do. With no real concept of male or female gender roles, the four year old didn't particularly care that it was the sort of item, flowered and gaudy, that was usually carried by older women of questionable taste. It fit the four books neatly and with just a little room to spare, with a pocket on the side for his magnifying glass and another on the front that remained empty.

In his focused obsession with the books he had found, Cal didn't even notice the shadow that had perturbed Lauriel. Now that they were secured, a heavy, comforting weight against his body as he moved, he went back to his searching, this time poking his way down a narrow passage between a rack of unfashionable hats and a cabinet full of decorative napkin rings.

[Nathalia]

((Nova received no answer to his knock...though an odd...cold sensation seemed to flow through the wood into his hand...how strange...
Eldy seems to have grabbed something she ought not to have though...))

Orange Goop: Oh...nasty, this stuff smells like orange juice and paint thinner. It didn't seem to have any effect at first, but 5 minutes after spattering on her paw, Eldy will begin to feel the effects. The tip of her tail will suddenly pain her as a sharp spike grows slowly and painfully from the tip and the tail itself lengthens by three feet! It takes two minutes for the transformation to end and during that time she is in quite a good bit of pain. Once it's over though, the tail snaps back to the way it was before as though nothing ever happened.
Once a week, she is able to change her tail into its new form and use it to smack across people, its sharp tip and elastic length making it almost good enough to use as a whip! It will only remain this way for about 5 minutes, though.

((How strange! Regardless, Cal seems to have found something as well.))

Magnifying Glass: This nice old brass piece is a good little collector's item, though it does also work in the perfunctory way. A small tingle ran through the finder's little body upon being grabbed and they will find that, once a week, they are now able to whisper the word "closer" and be able to focus on something clearly and as closely as they wish to for a full 5 minutes.

((Interesting indeed...the little shoppe suddenly seems to get colder, as though the front door had been left open...which it was not...and the door still locked the Nova isn't paying attention to seems to ice over...))

~Nathalia

[Lauryn de Vampyre]

Shaking off a strange tingling sensation in her arm, Lariel made her way once more to the back of the room and stood beside Nova. She saw him lean against the door and strain to hear if there was anyone inside. Lariel listened as well, but heard nothing besides the noise they were all making.

The little Torque girl was starting to get on her nerves. She and Nova didn't have to help her look for her family member. In fact, why had they decided to group together in the first place! Lariel considered asking Nova to leave with her to go find someone who might know what was going on when a strange sense of unease overtook her. For a reason she couldn't put her paw on, she felt the strong and strange urge to stay together. Safety in numbers, and all that. On a day like today, safety might not be a luxury anymore..

The Bobcat had to bite her lower lip to keep from laughing as she spied Cal shoving books in what appeared to be the mot frilly purses the young boy could have picked up. The poor thing didn't seem completely right in the head, but she didn't have the heart (or patience) to explain to him why that bag was for girls.

Standing this close to the fiery Nova, and looking towards the front of the store, Lariel hadn't noticed the cold or even when the door itself began to crust over with a thin layer of ice. It was only when she turned around to see if he'd made any progress with the lock when she noticed the difference. At first she thought it was a trick of the light or her imagination, but now that she'd seen it she could feel the cold coming from behind that door.

Acting quickly, Lariel grabbed Nova by the arm and pulled him away from the door. "Get back!" she shouted, pulling him backwards with her but not taking her eyes off the door - which seemed to be growing thicker with ice. It was as though the ice stretched outward, trying to reach them...

She shivered. "Nova,... I-I don't think we should open that door."

[Kitty]

He waited and there was nothing, hmm. Well, wait... there was something... but it was strange, almost foreign really. Hell, if it hadn't been for the fact that he had his human form he wouldn't even know what the sensation was. Cold. His fingertips lingered on the door, almost stroking it before he lifted them away. That was.... strange. He blinked a few times and almost put his fingers back on the door before Lariel spoke. He twitched an ear in her direction from taking his attention off this still relatively normal door to the other one in question. It... frosted over? He had a feeling whatever was causing the frost wasn't behind this door, but the icy one.... and he was intrigued.

Magic, it had to be magic. And that drew him in more then anything else. Even when she pulled him back his orange eyes stayed on that door. That was a cool trick... he wanted to meet whoever was responsible for it.

I think it's a power.... someone's in there I think.

He perked up both of his ears and moved toward the other door, dragging the bobcat if he had to. He lifted up a hand and went to touch the frosty surface of the door, enjoying the strange, yet wonderful, sensation of it against his fingertips. Slick, cool and ever so slightly wet. Definitely cool, no pun intended.

He went from stroking the icy door to trying the handle.. .damn, locked too. He could fix that.

Do Kamina or Cat have any powers like this that you guys know of?

He honestly didn't think they did, but hey... it was worth asking.

[[He's so gonna bust out those new tools and open this door unless y'all do something good XD <3]]