A city of white and silver, doctors from all over the world come to converge here and find work. Hospitals of all kinds decorate the white walkways of the city. There are many notable ones you can visit if your pet is in need of some attention. (+3 Precision)

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A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby crow » 06/18/2017 4:07 AM

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Skitter was in someone else's house. Again.

He couldn't help it. He was just so hungry. All the time, constantly--- it gnawed at him, creak creak creak, in the twisty wood of his trunk. His teeth ached, and his claws felt restless, and he gnawed his fingers just for some satisfaction, though it brought him none.

Before he met Dante, he did this a lot. Going into houses. Houses had food, and if there wasn't enough in the garbage, there was always more inside. He learned to open the locks with his claws. Dante said this was bad, Skitter had to stop. Dante knew a lot. And the house people were always screaming when they saw him. And things were okay for a while, after Dante found him, but now they were bad again, bad bad bad, and Skitter was hungry all the time. Dante too. Skitter didn't know how he could stand it.

Someone was screaming now.

Skitter turned, eyes baleful and wide in the glare of the flashlight, the remnants of a bone-in ham stuffed into his over-large maw.

He ran. He ran into the garbage. No one ever followed him there.
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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby Indigo » 07/08/2017 6:39 PM

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Erskine had taken her to task for not bringing the sword, but she couldn't bring herself to regret it. The thing was so impractical she couldn't imagine how Catriona had ever managed to kill anything with it—and in any case she wasn't sure this was a demonic situation. Arabella had never been intimately familiar with her mother's work, of course, but she was fairly certain "weird critter stole my ham" was not a supernatural occurrence. She had learned enough basic self-defense to protect herself from a lesser threat, and she'd brought most of her other tools, anyway. The black bag with all its pockets almost made her look like a professional. Hopefully her demeanor would take it the rest of the way.

She took a deep breath and knocked on the door. It was something of a formality, because she'd already talked to the homeowner in detail about the problem to make sure it fit the pattern, and she'd been told to just come right in, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it; it felt like a violation.

The pattern. It was the reason she'd taken this job at all, because the break-ins were just strange enough that they might fall under her loosely-defined purview. All the marks seemed to indicate that the thief was an animal, but the people who saw them—it?—described them as a distorted humanoid. But of course, anything could look distorted when it scared you enough.

Someone yelled through the house for her to come in. Probably trying to keep out of the way, in case she roused a demonic threat—she did bill herself as a demon hunter, after all. She pushed the door open and went in search of the intruder.



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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby crow » 07/10/2017 12:41 AM

Skitter had gotten good at hiding. It stopped the screaming, and also the hitting, when the screaming people got angry and grabbed for something to hit him with. He liked the hitting even less than he liked the screaming. He was hiding now, in the yard, in a pile of leaves, because there was no garbage. The garbage was in a bucket. He missed the city, where the garbage was in piles.

The leaves were good too. Skitter looked like a leaf. But leaves didn't go down deep, and it was hard to heap them back up. There was a dog barking somewhere. Skitter tried not to shiver. Shivering was bad. They would see him if he shivered.

His jaws were still clamped around the ham. He wanted to run, but it was still too noisy. He would run when it was quiet. Yes, that was a good plan.
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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby Indigo » 07/21/2017 9:56 PM

There was nothing in the kitchen, which made sense: even a regular animal would be smart enough to leave the scene of the crime, at least for a little while. The homeowner had left things in the same disarray as the intruder had, presumably as evidence. Or because they didn't want to get potential monster spit on themselves, also a reasonable consideration, though given the appearance of the mess the creature's saliva didn't have any unusual properties. But she wouldn't want to touch even normal saliva so she couldn't exactly fault the logic.

She picked her way through the house, every room on the first floor; going upstairs might result in a conversation with her client, which she didn't especially want. People were weird about her profession and tried to talk to her about all kinds of horrible things, like a worse version of elderly strangers cornering her on the bus to tell her about their medical problems.

Maybe she was just a weirdness magnet. But she'd avoid those conversations when she could, regardless.

The creature didn't seem to be hiding anywhere in the house—another reason she'd remained down here was because she doubted the client would have gone upstairs if the intruder's presence were suspected up there. Possibly the thing had left to ransack another house, or possibly not. She stepped out into the backyard and surveyed it.

Leaves, grass, dirt. It smelled off somehow. She was no gardener, but she knew how leaves were supposed to smell, and the smell of these ones was slightly to the right of what it should have been. Not particularly "demonic"—which was to say, not in line with any of the things she'd fought so far—but not normal. She swept her tail through the leaves to see if it got a reaction.



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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby crow » 07/29/2017 9:47 PM

Skitter wanted to fidget. Didn't. Leaves made noise when he shivered, and he didn't want that, no. Swish swish swish, and someone would find him, and then it would be bad bad bad. He remembered this. He would stay still, and quiet, and a long time would pass, and then he could go out and go away. Find Dante.

He was beginning to drool around the ham.

And then he went still, more still--- a light, noise. Voices. Oh, that was bad. Did they have dogs? He hated dogs. Dogs were loud, dogs chased and chased, and ripped. Dogs would fight him for his ham.

He couldn't see, but he could hear. Quiet footsteps. He couldn't shiver. They came closer, and he couldn't shiver. They stopped and Skitter stayed very very still.

And then, all at once, leaves were flying.

With a screeching cry, Skitter leaped free of the leaves, and cried again when the ham fell from his jaws. He clutched at it, and immediately tried to flee to the edge of the yard.
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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby Indigo » 08/21/2017 8:15 PM

She had no idea what the hell that thing was, but Arabella was reasonably sure it wasn't a demon. Her knowledge of her mother's adversaries was limited, true, but her general impressions had been of malice and of a hefty presence, both of which this creature seemed to lack. Unless it was extraordinarily well-disguised. She did have to take a moment to be impressed at its managing to hold an entire ham in a mouth that size, however briefly, but it was not exactly threatening.

The only thing to do was to chase after it, though she felt more than a little ridiculous galloping around someone's pleasantly autumnal backyard after a pork-wielding wooden man, or...whatever. Hopefully she would be faster than it, weighed down as it was.

Shouting that she meant no harm was probably a bad idea since the client might hear, and that could do things to her reputation and maybe get her kicked out of this house before she could figure out what she was dealing with, but she wanted to indicate a willingness to talk somehow so she settled for "Wait!" It was hard to say much else while running, anyway. Maybe she should take up jogging.



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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby crow » 08/22/2017 1:16 AM

Skitter ran. Skitter heard the leaf-flying one shout at him too. Skitter knew what it was saying--- Skitter wasn't stupid, not like people thought he was, Skitter understood--- but he wasn't going to wait. Nothing good ever came from waiting for people who wanted to hit you.

Unfortunately, there was a snag in his plans. They had a fence. He screeched again as he came to it, attempting to scrabble up, but to no avail. Why was it so tall?

Skitter looked left and right for another way to escape. He had to run, run run run, or else the leaf-flying one would catch him! Where to go, where to go?
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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby Indigo » 09/08/2017 7:54 PM

Perhaps it had been foolish to expect that to work. She hadn't really thought it would be eager to stop for someone chasing it, if it could even understand the language she was speaking, and had mostly hoped to startle it into freezing. Of course that hadn't worked out.

But it was hindered considerably by the fence, as well as the ham, which provided an opportunity. She couldn't tackle the creature with her full weight—it looked flimsy and she had no desire to injure it—but she could sweep her tail toward it and try to entangle it in its length, which was what she did. More violent than she would have preferred before knowing what she was dealing with, but the polite way wasn't working.

"Now," she said, "let's have a talk."



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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby crow » 09/19/2017 10:00 PM

Skitter was... a lot of things, but a talented fighter he was not. One whack from the pursuer's tail sent him sprawling to the ground. "Ack!" he said as the wind--- or something--- was knocked out of him. His limbs twitched, and for a moment it looked as if she might have flattened him permanently.

But then he picked himself up, made one more mad dash scrabble at the fence, failed to get anywhere, and crumpled up cowering in defeat. He let out an ungodly screech, and began gibbering at once: "No! Skitter didn't do it!" said Skitter, which would have been a lot more convincing if he wasn't still curled around his ham. "No fire! No axe! Skitter didn't---" At which point the words finally seemed to sink in, and he stilled for a moment, before nodding enthusiastically. "Yes, yes, talk! Skitter talk! Skitter talking right now!"

Not very coherent, but it was a start.
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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby Indigo » 10/03/2017 5:01 PM

As distasteful as she found it to use violence against a creature that was probably mostly harmless, Arabella couldn't deny it had gotten the desired result. More or less. She wasn't entirely sure what...Skitter, apparently, was going on about, but at least he was stationary and, yes, talking.

"Don't worry so much," she said, although her stern tone didn't do much to back up those words. "I don't even have an axe, do I? Now I have a few questions for you. Where did you come from? Why did you come here, specifically? And..." She looked him over. It wasn't a question she normally liked to ask, because it was pretty rude and because usually it didn't matter so much as morality did, but she'd never seen a creature like this before and there didn't seem any better way to figure it out. "And what are you, anyway?"



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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby crow » 10/08/2017 7:40 PM

Skitter mostly stayed cowering, though his assailant's words did get through a little, slowly--- it was true that she didn't have an axe. But she could have been hiding one! Many things were very sneaky, and big liars! That was what Skitter's brother said, before the big axe in the sky got him.

But she wanted him to talk, and if he didn't start, maybe she would stop hiding the axe. "S-Skitter is Skitter! Come from big leaf pile..." That was probably right, wasn't it? Skitter's memories were a bit fuzzy that far back, and it wasn't a question he got very often. And as for why he was here... Skitter paused, looking off to the side, and then in a thoroughly unconvincing tone, said, "Invited! Yes! A big dog say Skitter could come! Say, many things to be eating." Skitter nodded vigorously, as if this would somehow make his story more credible.
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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby Indigo » 11/08/2017 3:16 PM

"Big leaf pile...?" Of course, she hadn't been specific enough. More fool her for expecting a creature like this to understand the subtleties of what she'd come to think of as "mortal conversation". If she'd been thinking she would have been more precise. "What I mean is, where do you live? Are you from this realm? Or this neighborhood? Or somewhere else?"

A small smile crept across Arabella's face at Skitter's attempt to lie to her. "Interesting. Well, I don't know which dog you met, but judging by the call that brought me here I'd say they didn't have the authority to invite you here. It's not so important, anyway. You came here for food? What is it you eat?" Not people, certainly—for one thing he was much too small to be a threat to most, and for another he'd run away from an unarmed leawolf with no apparent defenses. "Surely there are better places to find it than other people's homes."

Maybe this would be a simple job. Maybe she could convince him he'd be better off someplace else, and he would just go there and she wouldn't have to explain to the client why she hadn't done any demon-slaying. Because one thing was pretty apparent to her at this point: whatever Skitter was, he wasn't a demon, and she couldn't conscience any kind of attack on him based on what she currently knew.



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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby crow » 01/27/2018 5:08 AM

"Live?" Skitter appeared to be genuinely stumped by the question. He wasn't a particularly complex creature, and the effort that showed on his features as he puzzled his way through it was genuine. "Here, there. Many places," the creature managed, after a moment. The idea of a home wasn't one he was familiar with, apparently.

He was more relieved to see that, as far as he knew, at least, the Leawolf had bought his story. "Yes. Yes! Food. Many good things," said Skitter, eyes shining with enthusiasm. When the Leawolf proposed that there might be better places to find food, he shook his head emphatically. "No, house food best tasty. See? See?" He waved his ham at the Leawolf. "No rotting. Fresh! Better than garbage."
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Re: A Series of Unfortunate Misunderstandings [P]

Postby Indigo » 06/26/2018 5:20 PM

Well, there went any hope of just sending the creature home, but that hadn't been especially likely, anyway. Something with a place to go probably wouldn't be acting up like this unless something else were terribly wrong, and that didn't seem to be the case. She'd been overly optimistic, perhaps. But that was nothing new.

She also couldn't argue with his assessment that fresh food was better than garbage, although she knew there were some things that would disagree. Hmm. Perhaps she could create a short-term solution, at her personal inconvenience, and she'd just deal with the argument later. Or immediately, depending on how good Skitter was at hiding. "You know, I can probably offer you some fresh food in a place that you won't get in trouble for being in. If you want."

[Wild Pet Found]



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