[NEXUS] Nexus Scouts!

[ThirdEmperor]

Cerise watches curiously. "Cool... I can do basic telekinesis, but I can't make shapes like that."

She turns to the cabins, and mutters, "From a preliminary scan, I can't see anything, but I haven't searched the place very thoroughly. Could you help me with that?" Which one to start with though? Shrugging, she flies towards the first cabin and enters from the roof, scanning through the individual rooms, the bathrooms and the hall, before floating to the lower floor.

Checking the all the private rooms is a bit of a tall order, but I'll assume Cerise is simply doing a fairly quick scan of each before moving onto the next. Actually searching each room from top to bottom would mean using up the vast majority of the allotted time, although I suppose she's free to do so if she wishes.

In any case, there don't appear to be any flags hidden in the private rooms. Probably to discourage people from nosing around in them, a theory reinforced by the locked doors.

On the other hand, there's quite clearly a flag hidden in the bathroom. 'Clearly' because there's a flag-shaped shadow cast upon the tile floor, 'hidden' because it's difficult to determine just where the shadow's being cast from.

"Umm, yeah. I'm standing in a box right now." Spotting the two flags, he reaches out with his mind and attempts to wrap the two flags in bubbles and pull them to him, taking them in hand. "And those were spheres. I don't think there's anymore up here. How do the cabins look?"

Uh-oh. Timmy mighta done well to search a little closer, 'cause that second flag hidden in the gutterpipe? Trapped. His attempt to tele-grab it breaks a tiny, almost invisible thread, sending leaves flying as the miniature catapult hidden below them swings into action, sending a barrage of paintballs flying in the kid psychic's direction!

[Stables]

Becca pauses inside and takes in the inside of the stables. She grabs one of her pokeballs and tosses it. A Phanpy appears. "Okay, Phanish. Go look for a flag in one of the stables. Me and Jamie* will look in the other ones." The pokemon immediately goes to look in the first stable. "I've got this one." Becca goes to peek into the second one."

* Because there's no way she remembers to use a different name.

Dinosaurs! Dinosaurs dinosaurs dinosaurs are clearly the best animals!

*cough*

Lying in the first pen, idly chewing on a salad of prehistoric ferns is a large, feathered beast with a beak and club-like tail, spikes sprouting from it's back. I assume that as a trainer Becca should have some familiarity with animals and, of so, she should then be able to determine that this is a very young member of it's species, nearly a baby.

Over in pen number two, Phanphy will also meet a dinosaur of the same species, although slightly larger, which grunts something akin to the animal-equivalent of 'hello' or, more accurately translated, 'you don't look tasty so I won't eat you but stay away from my food which is tasty'.

Well, I guess I should describe that better. MHF is not so much physically moving from one shadow to the next and peering out, as she is stretching her consciousness through the shadows. She's a sort of shadow psychic. It's how she controls them, with her consciousness. She once searched the city of Inside to find a tiny critter (Morbit) and found him in about half an hour.

Hey look! Flag!
MHF attempts to suck it into the cold, dark shadow abyss with her, where it will suffer immense emotional distress and maybe loss of heat.

Yikes.

Don't think there's much chance anyone's gonna outsearch the Mysterious Hooded Figure then, but thankfully there's more to this treasure-hunt than just finding the flags. Sometimes. In this case, it actually is that easy and MHF will be able to snatch the flag with no difficulty. One point to it!

Now, it would seem the next closest flag is hidden over in cabin three, in the refrigerator, packed in amongst sodas, microwave snacks and frozen, sugary foodstuffs, all the things you really shouldn't be giving kids. Out of curiosity, could MHF partially materialize within a space to small for iy, such as the fridge, or would it have to appear at the nearest shadow with sufficient room?

[Cabin Area]

Woohoo! One point!

Woah! Scoutmaster Harris sure is an active fellow! Spiky armor can already tell that she's going to have to put her nose to the grindstone if she wants to gather more flags. But that entails putting her nose to the dirt and crawling around on the ground on all fours following a scent trail, however profitable, would be degrading! If Spiky Armor were to do it in her human form, that is! So if she wants to be competitive in this competition and not look stupid and silly while doing so, she's going to need to morph into her wolf form! Awooo!

Thus, as Spiky Armor darts out of sight, she transforms into a medium-sized young wolf with fur as white as the driven snow and sprints toward Cabin #1, her nose taking point and trying to track the scoutmaster, attempting to deduce where he might've stopped from how much of his scent is in one area or how many footprints he left behind in a given space (if his shoes were dirty or the shoe imprints outside of the cabins betrays his step), and move things the scoutmaster might've touched on his most recent stroll!

Spiky Armor Wolfgirl might encounter Cerise and Timmy as she gives the cabin a quick once over, but she won't say anything to either of them unless they address her first because treasure and tricks up sleeves and stuff!

The bottom floor of Cabin #1 is decorated almost entirely in the remains of slain foes, the floor lined with hide carpets, lines of stuffed and mounted heads staring down from the walls with glass eyes. Even the furniture's upholstered in leather and fur and even scales, with frames of whittled bone no less. The place could easily be mistaken for a taxidermist's shop.

The Scoutmaster's footsteps meander through the room a ways, as if he wasn't entirely sure of his destination, moving from one trophy to the next indecisively. Good thing Spiky Armor's an accomplished tracker, for otherwise it would be quite easy to miss the signs of where he finally paused to hide a flag- In front of an enormous stuffed bear, standing upon a single hindleg with the second kicked out behind it, like a ballerina.

Tellingly, a small hint of green fabric can be seen hanging out from between it's jaws.

Hadrian stares at the alchemical symbols in fascination. He doesn't know what they are, but there's something familiar about them. His latent psychic connection to the collective unconscious starts to awaken. The young boy steps closer, on the verge of remembering something he never learned. Then, from a distance, someone's shout distracts him and the moment is gone. Hadrian walks inside and starts looking to see if there's a flag in here. Most of his attention is spent curiously studying everything that isn't a flag, though.

There's plenty to study here, between the obtuse instruments and numerous little vials, phials, flasks and beakers filled with exotic ingredients. Luckily, being distracted by all this won't hurt the search much- The first flag to be found is hidden within the clutter, tucked underneath the metal legs of a table crucible.

Only, there's a slight problem. This flag, although identical to the type they're searching for in all other respects, happens to be white.

Flag-Hunt- Tree

Now it's been found, Natalie doesn't necessarily need to see in colour any more. Which means she grows feathers and shrinks, her skull elongating into a beaked head and her tail retracting into a cluster of feathers making a bird's tail. Her arms bend oddly and turn into wings, and when the process is complete she's a black-capped chickadee, which is smaller and probably more nimble (I don't know; I've never seen one, but the tits in my garden are in the same family and are better fliers than the pigeons and doves). So Natalie-as-chickadee will fly up and try to dart around the pigeon. Hopefully the nest-owner won't see the smaller bird as a threat, or not as much a threat as a larger monkey was and ignore it.

This time, it seems Natalie will be getting a break. Although the appearance of another bird only causes the pidgin to grow more agitated, scratching at the branch it sits on with one talon like a bull pawing the ground, a sudden commotion from below startles it, creating a momentary distraction she might exploit.

Sure thing, Boss. Catherine sits down on the ground and keeps an eye on the kids that are visible from there.

Entrance

Bounding from the road comes a man 6 feet tall, heavily built, and dressed in rags. His one large eye frantically looked around for any people. He yelps with excitement when he sees the Scoutmaster and begins running towards him, but a flash of movement in the trees above stops him. He looks up with his mouth agape and sees a monkey transform into a bird before his very eye.

Tuk-tuk jumps up and down in joy and says, "Monkey-bird! Monkey-bird!" He now starts to look around to find a way to climb the trees and catch the monkey-bird.

But it doesn't look like Scoutmaster Harris will be catching a break of his own anytime soon. At least it isn't some supervillain trying to kidnap his charges. Sir, I am afraid that the 'monkey-bird' is a student here and that I will have to ask you to leave. He states, stepping between Tuk-Tuk and the tree.