Home to a variety of cultural backgrounds, Lamenolai is a citadel city with stone walls that encompass the whole city and stone 'guardians.' It is also home to the Headquarters of the Purines, an opposing organization to the Imperialists of Lambastia. (+2 Defense, +2 Fame)

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:. Monotony [OPEN]

Postby Jaykobell » 04/05/2017 1:04 AM

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He waited in line, just like everybody else. Amongst humans and big pets, the tiny Plush Fenling didn't stand out much in the line. His huge, fluffy tails were probably one of the biggest reasons why he could still maintain his spot in the line leading to the counter of the small café.

Here he was again; another day, another morning. Whereas some of the decisions he had to make in the past included things like deciphering coded messages and make split-second choices for the sake of both himself and others; the most exciting and "important" decision he had to make on most days was to decide what he wanted for breakfast from this little café. It didn't quite compare.

The line moved along, a few inches at a time. His mind wandered, a few minutes at a time, thinking back to more exciting days. Oh, he found ways to keep busy, but that wasn't always so easy when he was stuck with a basic job like everyone else. He needed the Keystones — how else would he afford to live now?

Eventually, the line closed in and his turn came, as it did every morning. The nice cashier recognized the Plush Fenling by now; she always gave him a smile when he appeared from the line. "Hi," she always greeted, "what will it be today?" Despite him being a regular, his order was always different.

Despite the time waiting in line, he wasn't sure. "I'm not really sure," he admitted. "You have anything new today? Anything different?" Even if it were something as mundane as changing coffee bean providers: he'd take it. Unfortunately, the cashier shook her head; and he sighed.

"We have some egg sandwiches that are almost ready," she suggested without skipping a beat. "Maybe with a croissant or an English muffin?"

He frowned, deep in thought. He didn't feel like anything really, and this was making the decision harder to make. But people were waiting in line, and it wouldn't be fair to have them wait like this forever. "I... Okay, how about I leave it up to the cook? A basic combo meal; something like that." The cashier looked a little surprised, but she nodded and delivered his order personally to the staff in the back. Not as exciting as stopping criminals or retrieving important artifacts, but the mystery of his breakfast today was the closest thing he would get to a thrill.

She came back shortly after, and she continued processing the clients down the line as the Fenling waited for his order. After a few minutes, one of the cooks handed over a small wrapped package to the cashier, along with a cup and a small box. She processed the order, and he paid the desired money. The sandwich and the box went into a small bag; but as with every time, she hesitated to hand over the cup. "You gonna be alright?"

He grabbed the bag in his teeth, and he grabbed the cup with one of his four prehensile tails. With his mouth full, he just nodded to the cashier and then moved along to free the space near the counter for the other customers.

He made his way outside to one of the tables on the terrace. It was a bright sunny day with people and pets alike walking through the streets of Lamenolai. He sat alone at the table, putting the cup and the bag on the table. Admittedly, finding out what he had ended up with was kind of exciting.

He opened up the bag and took a sniff at the cup, all the while observing the world moving right in front of him. He was alone, and he was staring off into space. His sandwich was unwrapped, and it'd taken the lid off the cup, but he didn't touch them right away. He subconsciously fiddled with the pearls in his tails, twisting and turning them around.

This life was peaceful, but it was uneventful. Every day, he sat at this table and tried to hold his breath; see if something exciting or thrilling would happen. Even just someone talking to him; anything. His life had become so monotonous that it had become mind-numbing.
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Re: :. Monotony [OPEN]

Postby Indigo » 04/06/2017 10:15 PM

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The Croesus had touched down in Lamenolai this morning with no immediate work awaiting it, and for once Six had been forgiving and given everyone shore leave, such as it was. The opportunity was unusual enough that no one could quite agree on how to spend their time, and after a few minutes of excited hubbub Six had shooed them all off the ship so he could concentrate on...whatever he did in there when everyone else was out. Eliza had never worked up the nerve to ask, and now certainly wasn't the time.

There had been some talk of meeting for lunch before everyone parted ways—though whether they could find a restaurant to accommodate Marvel was a subject carefully avoided—and Perry had mumbled something about going out that evening before sprinting off, but for now Eliza was alone. As alone as anyone could be in such a large city, at least.

After spending so many weeks with just five other people in a vessel clearly built for more she was used to a certain kind of quiet, to being able to pick out every voice she overheard, and walking so close to so many people unsettled her. She'd have to do something about that. If such innocuous circumstances could make her so uncomfortable she'd be rubbish in the next crisis. She self-consciously adjusted her movements, occasionally shouldering past people who were in her way, swinging her tail a little wider than she normally would; not inviting conflict, because that would just be stupid, but making her presence known. Making a point of being there.

The radio at her belt cracked on, and Bell's reedy voice said, "Bad news."

Eliza unhooked the radio and stepped out of the flow of foot traffic, leaning back against a wall as she raised the device to her ear. "Six pick up another client already?"

Bell laughed nervously. "I wish! No, someone tracked us from the last pickup spot!"

"Get to the point, kid." But Eliza was already doing the calculation. Their last client had been cagey, said he wanted some crates delivered but refused to explain what was in them. It could be stolen goods, drugs, some kind of weird bioengineering thing—all things that had turned up in the Croesus's hold at one time or another—but she had no idea which, since Six had refused to let them check. Apparently he'd charged an extra fee for the privilege of none of the crew popping open the cargo ten seconds after launch. And of course he hadn't asked any questions; that was policy.

"A human, I think. Or humanoid, but close to human, not like—anyway I saw him following me and I called Six, and when I described him Six said he was at the last pickup spot—"

"Wait, what? How could he have gotten here so fast?"

"I don't know! Six said he was going to make a call and I should let everyone know to be on the lookout!" Bell quickly described the man—tall, blond ponytail, hat with a stylized Kuni on it—and as the description went on Eliza's eyes passed over the street and slowly fixed on a human matching it exactly. And a detail Bell seemed to have missed: he walked like he was armed.

"Bell," she said, cutting off a stream of anxious adjectives, "have you called anyone else yet?"

"N-no?"

"Call Perry next, and tell her I need backup." She switched off the radio to preempt any argument. Toby would probably chew her out for that later, but she'd had worse. The human was looking directly at her now, and she wasn't even sure what she'd done to draw attention to herself, but she'd never been much of a stealth operator—or maybe there just weren't a lot of Carnival Teigu around.

He was reaching into his jacket. The only response was to sprint full speed in the opposite direction, which she did, shoving people out of the way without even really looking at them. She didn't know what exactly he wanted with individual crew members, but there was a limited pool of options: hostage, interrogation, or maybe he'd just kill her out of spite. She wasn't the most recognizable of them but she was probably the most vulnerable—aside from Bell, who'd gone back to the ship—so she was probably the easiest target.

One certainty: whatever was in those crates must be valuable in one way or another. If not financially, then it might well be some sort of secret, and if they could get out of here without being pursued—

Her focus on this train of thought had distracted her from her surroundings, which caused her to plow directly into a table outside a cafe, knocking it over and flipping her onto her back and momentarily throwing any coherent thought out of her head. Not ideal.



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[P1]

Postby Jaykobell » 04/06/2017 11:09 PM

Being such a big city, one would expect Lamenolai to be bustling with action and opportunities for excitement. While that wasn't entirely untrue, the Fenling's definition of excitement was too grandiose for casual activities. He always held on to that glimmer of hope that some day, something would happen — sometimes it was all about being at the right place at the right time. Being the home of the Purines, Lamenolai was fairly peaceful, however.

He nibbled at his sandwich, but not that he was terribly hungry or in the mood for food. He ate out of necessity, and not really out of desire.

And suddenly — his body tensed. His ears stood up, and he slowly straightened up. He focused on his hearing; he couldn't pick up on much due to the amount of people and pets in the near vicinity, so nothing stood out. But he had a hunch — a feeling that something—

And then something crash-landed into the table right next to him.

He froze instinctively when he heard and saw the creature tumbling right into the table right next to him. Yikes, just a bit closer and they would've made a mess of his table and him! It got knocked over, and while it was fortunate no one had been there nor had any food been left there, the fact remained someone had crashed into it!

He left his food and his drink on his table and skipped over to the mess. "Are you okay?!" he called out as he made his way over. As he got closer, he could now tell the unfortunate one was a Teigu — a Carnival breed, to be precise. "Are you hurt?" He wasn't afraid or nervous, but his voice did express obvious concern.

"What happened?" His heart started beating faster — there was no way someone would just tumble right into a table this way. Was someone after them? Were they running from something or someone? Were they in danger? Did they need help? He had minimal psychic abilities — being a Fenling made you more sensitive to these things, thanks to the many small orbs they carried. Still, he couldn't read minds.
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Re: :. Monotony [OPEN]

Postby Indigo » 04/12/2017 3:57 PM

It took her a minute to remember words, and to realize that the sound the Fenling made was composed of them, and to understand what any of them were—hopefully she hadn't done any permanent damage to herself slamming into the ground like that, but she'd have to worry about it later.

"I'm—fine." The Fenling didn't seem especially startled by what had just happened, and she wasn't sure whether to be suspicious of that or not. She craned her neck to look for the human, but he'd disappeared. Very not ideal. She stood up, carefully, still scanning her surroundings in case he showed up again, but so far he hadn't that she could see. Well, attacking someone without drawing attention when she'd just very publicly crashed into a table was much harder than doing the same to someone that no one was looking at; she'd bought herself some time at least.

She turned to the Fenling as she dusted herself off and began to examine the contents of her belt. "Just a run-in with someone I'd rather not talk to. You know how it is." The radio was cracked; she hadn't been planning to use it now anyway, but it would still be unfortunate if she had to replace it. She'd test it later. "I hope I didn't disrupt your breakfast too much." Her multitool was still intact, but then there wasn't much that could be done to break it. Everything else was stuff she really shouldn't be taking out in public if she wanted to avoid drawing more attention than she already had. "I would offer to compensate you, but I don't get paid until the end of the week."

She felt a little bad about such a flippant dismissal, but the alternative was drawing some random stranger into whatever was going on, and given that even she didn't know what was happening that seemed like a pretty terrible idea. Time to leave.

She made it about three feet, and then spotted the human again. He was a considerable distance from where she'd last seen him, and she hadn't noticed the kind of crowd movement that would have indicated some jerk running to a new position, which meant...something bad, probably. Also, he was looking at her. It was entirely possible he'd been looking at her this whole time, and seen the Fenling talking to her.

The human disappeared again. There wasn't even any visible effect; one second she was looking at him and the next he wasn't there. Definitely something bad. She gestured behind her in the general direction of the Fenling, to get his attention, said, "You may want to follow me," and went to find some secluded area to plan, moving with careful nonchalance.



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[P3]

Postby Jaykobell » 04/16/2017 10:46 PM

It took a bit for the Teigu to answer, but at least she seemed relatively unharmed. That fall would probably hurt more in the morning than now.

Otherwise, it sounded like something really was happening, as the Teigu moved on to look over all her tools and assets. At that moment, he got lost a little in her belt. The tools, the thrill, the missions — the undercover image of it all.

It took him a few seconds to process her words, this time around. "Oh, uh, my...?" he mumbled awkwardly, but then it came back. "Oh, no no, don't worry about it," he assured her with a sheepish smile. "Truth be told, I'm kinda happy you did — I mean, not that I'm glad you tumbled over that table... I mean." He was going to stop right now before he dug his grave any deeper.

But almost as soon as she'd appeared, she was leaving. He blinked, watching the Teigu leave — and he'd be lying if it wasn't a little disappointing. It looked like his boring monotonous life was getting right back on track.

He was about to return to his table when the Teigu spoke to him again. His ears tweaked, and he turned back towards the Teigu. "F—Follow you?" he echoed, but he had little time to really question anything. Honestly — not that he wanted to. "A—All right!" He agreed with little difficulty, leaving his food behind and following the Teigu along. He had no idea where they were going, or what was even happening; but he was down for it. For now, he would quietly follow her; he figured she would explain things to him once they got somewhere quieter and safer than in the open.
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Re: :. Monotony [OPEN]

Postby Indigo » 04/24/2017 1:20 PM

She hadn't expected him to follow quite so readily, given that she was a complete stranger who'd just made a fool of herself right in front of him, but it was just as well that he did because she wasn't very good at persuasion. That was more Perry's field, really, or Marvel's when he was in a good mood. The Fenling's apparent enthusiasm for following a stranger to an unknown destination was a bit concerning, but she didn't have time to worry about that and her pursuer at once.

A couple of blind turns brought them to a gap between buildings that barely qualified as an alley, which might be a little suspicious but at least they wouldn't be spotted right away. She was hoping the human would expect her to get as far away from the cafe as possible, so that staying close would buy some time, but it was hard to be certain of much. Maybe Perry would get here soon and be able to figure out what was going on.

For now, though, she owed this Fenling an explanation. Even if it might be a bit hard to swallow. She leaned out of the alley to be sure no one else was around and then turned back to him and began talking as quickly as she could. Which was very. "All right, listen, I don't know anything about you but I might have just accidentally put you in danger, so you should probably stick with me for now no matter how this sounds." That was about as far as her persuasive skills went. "I work on an airship that mostly carries cargo between cities, and nobody checked the contents of our last shipment, but I think whatever it is must have been valuable and either it was stolen or somebody is trying to steal it now. I'm being chased by an armed human—" She paused, considering. "—or maybe not a human, and maybe more than one, but anyway I don't think they're very interested in polite negotiation. I need to find out what's going on, maybe find someone else from my crew, make a plan. And they've seen you with me, so now I have to account for you, too."

She glanced out of the alley again. The problem, really, was that unless this Fenling had some very particular skills, he was likely to just be dead weight. And she couldn't just leave him to die, but neither was she sure about dragging him around with her while she looked for clues, or whatever. "I don't expect you to be able to help me with any of that," she said, "but once I'm sure I've lost that guy I can take you back to the ship, and you should be safe there. Sound all right to you?"



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