Foxside: The Temple of Inari 51

[Fenric]

[Sanctuary]

Felina frowns

I don't think I like that marble...

[Recaiden]

[Sanctuary]

Tavlii tiptoes over to stand by her fellow priestess.
"No, it was...unpleasant. We have a place for dangerous artifacts here, no?"

[Fenric]

[Sanctuary]

Felina nods

We stick them in anti-magic boxes and put them in the vault until someone who can deal with them is available.

Yeah... the official policy really is "head in the sand". I wonder how bad 8 years of collected stuff has become? But that's for another day... Felina looks pointedly at an eavesdropping acolyte, who scurries off for a box.

We need to get a proper diviner again. That Xu Fu is certainly talented, but he's uptight and keeps short hours.

Oh, and did you see the little fire-breathing, six-tailed creature the children were playing with?

[Recaiden]

[Sanctuary]

"That's something then."

Tavlii chuckles.

"The vulpix? Yes. Wherever did it come from? Is one of the children here a trainer?"

[Fenric]

[Sanctuary]

Felina tilts her head

Not that I know of... apparently it was sleeping here, curled up in front of the altar the other day. Laura assumed it was someone's pet and took it out for the children, and it certainly enjoys playing with them... though we've been having to use Protection from Fire more than we usually would have been. It's not bad practice for the junior priests, I suppose.

I wonder what Caroline will think when she gets back from... wherever she went

Felina tilts her head back the other way

Where is Caroline, anyway?

[Recaiden]

[Sanctuary]

"Poor thing. Someone must have assumed it belonged here, being so foxlike."
Tavlii half-frowns, wondering the same thing now,

And praying their Locate spell, asking Inari where their high priestess has gone.

[Fenric]

[Sanctuary]

The acolyte returns with an anti-magic box sized appropriately to the bottle, and Felina puts the whole thing inside.

Mark it with "Arlem's Message" and put it near the door: we might need it again.

The acolyte bows and heads back down the stairs.

Tavlii's spell shows that Caroline is out in the Mountains, some two hundred miles from Inside.

[Recaiden]

[Sanctuary]

Tavlii relays this information to Felina.
"Wonder what she's doing all the way up there."

It would be rude to go find out though.

[Fenric]

[Sanctuary]

Felina shrugs

Vacation? There are some really nice villas out that way, and she's had a rough time of it lately. I think I'd want a vacation if some pit-fiend ran me through with a jagged evil sword.

[Recaiden]

[Sanctuary]

Tavlii nods. But she also takes a moment to send a message skittering Carolinewards, through non-Inari channels. Just plain psionic mumbo-jumbo.

Dear High Priestess Caroline. Hope you are recovering well. Everything remains in good order at the temple, and you are in our thoughts.
-Tavlii and Felina and all the staff.
P.S. If you care to respond to this message, just think clearly that you do so and the construct should pick that up.

Of course, the message might have trouble finding her.

Vacation. That's an interesting idea. Outmoded? No, probably still useful for philosophical fatigue. She will need to schedule one for themselves.

"Anyway, she'll probably go on about it breathing fire too, but think it's as adorable as anyone does. I hope it isn't lonely."

[Fenric]

[Sanctuary]

Felina giggles

I certainly hope it's not lonely. I don't know that we could really deal with...

Something near the door says "Fen!"

more than one?

And a yellowish creature walks in. It has large ears with reddish ear tufts, and its fluffy tail has a red tip

Um... hello...

Fennekin!

[Recaiden]

[Sanctuary]

Tavlii gives her a sharp look. Clearly Felina is cursed or doing this on purpose.

"Well, we've got more than one."

She heads over and kneels down near the new pokemon and offers it a purple pokeblock to eat.

[Fenric]

[Sanctuary]

Felina protests

It's not my fault!

The Fennekin eats the block happily

Fen! Fen!

And as Tavlii looks back up, she will see a Flareon lurking in the arboretum.

[Recaiden]

[Sanctuary]

"No, but they certainly seem to like you."

Tavlii waves to the Flareon, extending to it a block as well. She has a whole dispenser full.
And then gets out a pokeball and opens it up, allowing a little ball of feathers to hop out and perch on her shoulder.

"Na na!"

[Fenric]

[PokecenterSanctuary]

Felina blinks in surprise.

You have a bird... in a little red and white ball? What is that?

Then she comes over as the Flareon walks up and tentatively tries the proferred treat.

Well... they sort of look fox-ish, I suppose. Sort of. But it's not like we keep a bunch of actual foxes roaming around the grounds.

She turns abruptly at a sound from the south door, but it's just the acolyte coming back.

They're going to need an enclosure or something.

[Recaiden]

[PokeSanctuary]

"It's a Natu. It's the same class of being as the other three. Just not as foxlike." Obviously.
"Na na tu!"

Tavlii laughs and nods to the acolyte.

"I don't suppose you know anything about these?"

[Fenric]

[PokeSanctuary]

Felina and the acolyte both shake their heads

No, I've never seen anything quite like them. Why would you want to use Trap the Soul on your pet like that?

That being a spell that works rather remarkably like a pokeball

[Recaiden]

[PokeSanctuary]

"Well, it's partly historical. There used to be a lot of monstrous specimens, and capturing them was more permanent, I think, than killing them."
"Since they've started being kept as pets, the technology's been modified to make it a lot more pleasant than the spell would be."

Tavlii turns to the bird on her shoulder.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"Na!"

[Fenric]

[PokeSanctuary]

Felina hmms.

Still seems odd...

Tavlii finally gets a response

It's been an .... interesting couple of days. I'll explain later

[Rebonack]

How does that curse go?

May you live in interesting times?

Anywho!

Fortuna returns, now with way more SCIENCE! equipment in her inventory spell, including several PIE units she had managed to salvage. She had also rummaged around to collect the shot shield generators that the goons had been using. Who knows what kind of stuff might come in handy?

Regardless, she'll look for Steve since he's ostensibly the expert on impossibility exclusion. And once she finds him?

Both his most recent prototype and the model the bad guys were using will be produced for him.

"They could be in better shape, but this was all I was able to salvage," she admits. "Can you tell which version of the technology they had stolen?"

Those dastardly industrial espionage peoples!

[Recaiden]

[PokeSanctuary]

"It is kind of weird, I suppose. We never questioned it. Now, they have to be willing or quite weak to be put in one,"
Some exceptions.

"But it's strange that they're used at all."

Slight frown at the response. At least she sounds okay. No emergency.

[Fenric]

[PokeSanctuary]

Felina shrugs and coaxes the flareon over. She lets it sniff her hand then tentatively scratches it under the chin, which it appears to appreciate and wags its tail.

At least they seem friendly enough.

She sniffs the air herself.

I think this one's a girl... at least, if the scents are at all comparable to the mammals I'm used to. She smells like human, too... I wonder if somebody abandoned them here.

---

[Hospital]

Steve has been moved to the hospital, because they're afraid he might have a concussion. He looks sadly at his prototype

That's a pity... custom, one-off devices like that are a lot of work.

Then on to the DART agent's version. He snorts

Three revisions back at least - we stopped using those capacitors because they tended to blow out. And we found out the hard way that this antenna gain circuit suffers from feedback: you can change these from an "impossibility excluder" into a wild-magic bomb with the right sequence of attacks. And see this here? Off the shelf junk meant for stereos isn't really up to spec for this sort of device. Oh of course: off the shelf PC parts, too.

Hah!

Whoever was making these certainly didn't want to spend any money on them...

His voice trails off and he stops talking, looking at the back of the circuit board. He grabs another DART unit and takes it apart, then compares the two.

They've left the fab-code on the PCB. We can find out where these were made: just need to look up who runs 036-990887

To cut off a bit of back and forth, Fortuna will find that that is a Skyside factory owned by Digital and Analog Resin Transformations, who offer a wide variety of electronic fabrication services, including PCB lamination.

[Rebonack]

[Hospital]

Fortuna gives her condolences for the poor, innocent, destroyed prototype.

It really deserved better than that.

When given the fabrication code she plugs it into a query on her PIPcolt and the wrist computer spits out some results for her! "Hmm... That's interesting... Digital and Analog Resin Transformations made them out of a factory in Skyside. They seem to be a pretty normal manufacturing company, though... wait..."

She peers at the name a moment longer.

Then a moment more.

Then up at the previous post.

"Dee ay are tee. DART. And you work for Davison Accounting, Reporting, and Testing? And that rabbit eared person? The 'agents' called him to pick me up and told him to take me to your place of business. What did you say the name of the company he worked for was, again?" Fortuna asks. She's seeing a connection here! She remembers the name, but she wants Steve to make the link, too.

[Fenric]

[Hospital]

Steve blinks

Derrek Avery's Rental Tools: the largest store-front tool rental business in the Nexus. And that spells DART, too...

He looks down

And they shot me with a dart. Miserable bastards... Davison is a front company for those guys, isn't it? They were taking my best work and making weapons out of it.

[Deathkeeper]

Hospital

Nick nods.
"With an obvious naming pattern this is starting to look like a series of fronts with comic book villain logic. I mean, if it is, who the heck uses the same acronym? Do they get giggles out of no one catching it?
I'm not really sure if I'm supposed to go to Skyside. I know my bosses really hate the place." he comments.

[Recaiden]

[PokeSanctuary]

"Or if they escaped from somewhere."
Tavlii goes to pat the fenekin on the head and then goes to find an acolyte to help with making a proper place to keep the fox-things. THey can't just wander around the sanctuary, after all.

[Rebonack]

[Hospital]

Fortuna gives a nod.

They noticed it too!

Good, she isn't just going crazy.

"I'm not really sure how things work over in Skyside," Fortuna replies. "But given that Inside is at least supposed to be a civilized place, I'm sure the authorities wouldn't be too happy about criminal organizations trying to murder citizens who are minding their own business on account of them being a 'chaos anomaly'."

Or at least Fortuna hopes that the Union wouldn't be okay with that sort of thing.

"At the very least, it will make rooting out the other front organizations a lot easier," she says before glancing at Steve. "Does the Union have some kind of witness protection program? I can't imagine that you would be safe going back to work. They were intending to kill you and capture me."

She really doesn't want to imagine what they were planning on doing with her once captured.

[Fenric]

[Sanctuary]

The acolyte is still here! The fennekin and flareon trot along after Tavlii curiously, pausing to sniff curiously at the altar.

Go on, little ones. You should be outside.

They both look at Felina, then turn to head outside.

---

[Hospital]

Steve shakes his head

Yeah, pretty dumb.

Then he sighs

I imagine I was too close to figuring them out... I had filed some complaints about recent activities I saw. Then I asked about that Jackalope guy...

[Baeleck]

[La Fontaine => Foxside]

Urias and Katrina return from a successful evening of live music!

The boy is a little sluggish on his feet as they walk up the gravel path - drinks and tiredness are taking their toll. He seems pretty happy though.

Upon reaching the sanctuary door, Urias unlinks his arm from hers and gives a little nod. 'Thanks for inviting me to the club, Katrina,' he says. 'I'd definitely go again, in future.'

Yay! A gig buddy!

[Rebonack]

[Sanctuary]

Hey, look who it is!

It's Sunder and Dark Dreams! The former being that nightmaere who has been to the temple a few times. Her statue has increased noticeably, giving her a regal, imperious air. And not to mention the fact that she even looks a bit more... alive than she did before. There's more definition to her form than there was previously, as if she is made of flesh and bone and fur as well as spooky gloom instead of just spooky gloom.

No doubt that's significant.

The latter is a recently sired gloomling unicorn who has likewise inherited her 'mother's partly living and partly undead status. That probably helps with the whole 'not devouring everyone' thing.

~Alright, this is the place,~ Sunder says. ~I figure you people weren't too keen on Inari before you got ate twice. But since you're on my side we're cool with the foxes. Just sayin'.~

Important things to keep in mind.