Inside 63

[Cyber Punk]

[Main Street]‎

‎"All the same, Nimaah!" Ilyona cautions, wagging a finger, before waving her to follow. "Wet's go!"

And then they go to TROGS!‎

[Ionbound]

[Bubbled Office]

Sarah smiles as the demon curls back up, and starts to relax, the big encounter of the day dealt with. Over the course of a few hours, Sarah types a whole lot, plays a flash game briefly, and deals with two other clients: a woman of questionably eastern european descent asking for help with a suit over discrimination in the workplace, and a small, mousy-looking fellow planning to file suit on the wererat that infected him and asking for details and representation.

After those two clients, right as Sarah is about to go back to her flash game, there comes a knock on her door, and a voice that Sarah recognizes as her boss, Wilhelm Cox, says, "Sarah? We need to talk." Sarah sighs, annoyed that the man went over her head, and says, "Come in, sir."

[Recaiden]

[Bubbled Office]

Sarah has plenty of time, to just be consulted.
And here's this other person. Different from the others. Walking differently, talking differently.
The demon watches. That's its job.

[Ionbound]

[Bubbled Office]

Wilhelm slowly opens the door, and the first, most striking thing is his red eyes and pale skin, betraying his vampirism. Sarah frowns as he walks in and asks, "This is an unexpected surprise, sir? What's going on?" The vampiric lawyer smirks slightly and says, "I think you know, Sarah. You summoned a demon on a client?" Sarah frowns and replies, "Is that what that fat bastard told you? Look. Do you see a demon in this room? I certainly didn't manifest enough random magical skills to do something like that."

Wilhelm sighs and says, "No matter what happened, you can't blow off a client like that. Especially someone like Mr. Wilson, who is very rich, and an important contributor to this firm. And...I'm afraid he gave me an ultimatum. Either you be fired, or he take his business elsewhere. And...I can't believe I'm saying this, especially how close you are to making partner," his eyes flash to Sarah's neck, then back to her face, "But we can't afford to lose such an important client. I'm afraid we'll have to let you go."

Sarah blanches at the news and says, "You have got to be kidding me. After all the hard work I've put in...Just gone? Because some fat, rich sexist can't deal with having a female lawyer who won't put up with his bull****? Fine. I see how it is. You value him more than me. I'm out." With that, she storms out of the office, and back to the elevator, pissed as all hell.

[Recaiden]

[Bubbled Office]

The demon does not understand office politics, vampires, and outright bribery.
It knows Wilhelm does not smell like food. People are angry. But it's staying here.

And when the bubble moves quickly, out to the elevator, it follows, faithfully there.

[Shadowcaller]

Loch and Key

"The exposure would be good for them, even if the children are a little younger than my two." Jezebel says with a wry smile. "As for seven children, I could never imagine having such myself and I had been a literal sex fiend." The Ex-Daemon jokes. Partly.

Loch and Key

"Yeah... I'm honestly worried about her. But I have minded my own business for now. I just hope she doesn't decide to have more children. I speak from personal experience when I say that such large families can be problematic." She shakes her head. "Either, just how old are your children now? Biologically I mean I never got a good impression on either their age." Considering neither was a product of a standard pregnancy....

[Ionbound]

[Bubbled Office]

Once Sarah is in the elevator, she rubs her head and stabs at the first floor button frustratedly, ignoring Wilhelm's promises of a good reference and severance package as she waits in the elevator, taking deep breaths to collect herself so she doesn't go off on the receptionist when she arrives.

When she reaches the bottom floor, she doesn't even give the receptionist a second look as she storms out, and starts the half-mile walk back to her apartment.

[Recaiden]

[Bubbled Office]

Are you sure we can't eat any of them? The demon wonders and whines.

But yes, they're sure. It keeps following, a quick bouncing gait that features frequent waiting for Sarah.

[Ionbound]

[Bubbled Office->Bubbled Home]

Sarah walks home, taking the same route she did on the way out, even passing by the manhole the demon first came out of. But if she makes it home, she unlocks the door into a three-room apartment, pulls some ice cream out of the freezer, and sits down on her couch, turning the TV to the movie channel.

[Recaiden]

[Bubbled Home]

As they pass the gutter the demon crawled out of, it tries to get Sarah's attention. They should go this way!

But if she isn't persuaded, she'll find it nosing around her apartment briefly before ending on the couch next to her, trying to get a taste of the ice cream. That does smell like food.

[Fenric]

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

Their CEO and leader may be gone, but the stores carry on: still the preferred supplier for the bustling Temple of Inari and frequented by the furry, fox headed Vulpans and their friends.

Dressed in the plain white of an Acolyte, a young male fox has just finished his shopping and is crossing the expansive parking lot on his way back to the bus stop.

[Ionbound]

[Bubbled Sewer?]

The demon succeeds in getting Sarah's attention, and she heads over to the manhole, curious as to what the demon wants her to see.

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

As the young acolyte crosses the parking lot, he may get the feeling of being...watched by something. Or someone, possibly. And indeed, once he's about 3/4ths of the way across the parking lot, a pale woman walks out from behind a car, just behind him, and attempts to grab him from behind.

[Recaiden]

[Bubbled Sewer?]

The demon crawls through its opening, a little space where the concrete's been scraped slightly away to make it wider. Its little hands beckon Sarah to follow.
What it wants her to see is further down and further in.

[Fenric]

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

The acolyte looks concerned and his ears swivel from side to side looking for a noise, but by the time he figures out where the threat is it is too late!

With a frightened yelp, he is grabbed! He drops his shopping bag and squirms to get away.

[Ionbound]

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

The woman behind the acolyte grins as one hand wraps around his muzzle, the other around his chest, and as she tilts his head, she whispers in his ear, "I'm going to tell you what's going to happen to you. I'm going to feed on you...Make you a monster like me. If you accept it, you'll enjoy every moment of your new life. If not...Well, then I'll have a cute fox slave." With that, she grins and without waiting for his response, sinks her fangs through his fur and into his neck.

[Bubbled Sewer]

Sarah follows the demon through the opening, frustration with her job completely replaced by curiosity as to where the demon is leading her.

[Recaiden]

[Bubbled Sewer]

The demon creeps through the sewer, pushing at the edge of the bubble, not getting too far ahead of Sarah.

She might start to hear something. A hazy, dreamlike voice in the back of her mind.
Hear? Closer. Welcome.

Through cramped damp passages, tunnels with dangling moss.

[Fenric]

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

Yeah, that's just bound to get a lot of cooperation. But the poor little todd is not strong enough to escape to start with, and it only gets more hopeless as he weakens. Tears fall from his whiskers

No! No... nooo... no... Inari, save me!

But the MagMart parking lot is not the Temple, so help is quite some distance away.

[Ionbound]

[Bubbled Sewer]

Sarah continues to crawl forwards, shaking her head as she hears the voice, beginning to wonder if she's started to go crazy. Crawling through the sewers following a demon, hearing voices in her head...Crazy, right?

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

The woman grins as she hears the fox's last pleas, but doesn't kill him. She lives him on the edge of life and death, and says, "No Inari here. Just me," then bites open her own wrist, offering it to the poor foxy, saying, "Decision time. Live forever, or die and become my slave."

[Recaiden]

[Bubbled Sewer]

People might do silly things when they've just lost their job. And in such circumstances!
Sarah. Not crazy. Never seen anyone like you. Shouting so loudly to be left alone. We couldn't listen.

The demon goes happily along. Sarah might be able to piece together the sounds of the rest of the sewer to notice there's now something following them. It might be a bad time to turn around. They start to pass out of the area that's been cut and bricked to carry the city's water and waste, and into caverns that were broken and clawed open. Tall enough to not crawl, though.

[Following a Map]

It takes a bit of work to get back to the gazebo where spiders would arrive, actually. But it's best to be thorough with these things. Arlem as not-exactly-Samantha looks around, looks at her map, confirms the major landmarks have kept themselves in the same orientation...
What were the celestials spying on? Seems so inefficient, with this route only being traveled once...
Off she goes, following the route south through the 'safe' places charted out.

[Fenric]

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

The woman grins as she hears the fox's last pleas, but doesn't kill him. She lives him on the edge of life and death, and says, "No Inari here. Just me," then bites open her own wrist, offering it to the poor foxy, saying, "Decision time. Live forever, or die and become my slave."

Ears folded flat, trembling from terror and blood loss, and only borderline coherent at all: the poor todd's warm, soft tongue tentatively licks the vampire's blood.

[Zefir]

By way of answer to the first, Adir just grins. In regards to having a weapon, Adir nods. "Always. And I've had to put up with wizards and their like before. Don't you worry about me.

[Park of Seasons]

"Well, better get it ready and running. I guess I won't get any more informations by hanging out here." he takes a look back at the mages. They haven't changed much, but the green robed gnomes seems to focus on the direction Zefir and Adir hide.

[Fenric]

[Following a Map]

Arlem follows along easily enough without much difficulty, but it's not as easy as the map makes it look. Up and down, sometimes scaling considerably tall (if interesting) office buildings, the path wandering easily twice as far as it should need to be.

Eventually, Arlem does indeed end up back at Zafflebrod's... where the overall ambient chaos makes tracing difficult. The time, surprisingly enough, seems slightly after the incident with gummi bears.

[Ionbound]

[Bubbled Sewer]

Sarah frowns as she hears the noises behind, and, perhaps foolishly, turns her head to look back, all the while pressing on, standing up when the tunnel is wide enough to do so, and mentally asking, What? I...What do you mean? Who are you?

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

The woman's smile widens as she feels the todd's tongue licking at her blood and says, "Yes...Good. Embrace the darkness..." She cradles his head as she watches his changes. Her blood should taste sweet to him, flowing easily down his throat, but once he swallows enough, which really isn't very much at all, he should start to feel like he's burning up as his heart stops and the transfiguration to a vampire begins.

[Recaiden]

[Bubbled Sewer]

Behind her is...the way they came. If there is something back there, it's not close enough to be seen.
No one sees you. You try very hard not to be noticed. A useful quality. How did you come by it?

The reach the edge of the demon's home - where the ground and the walls are alive with a thick carpet of creeping muck, inky purple-blue, almost black. The stuff slithers slightly away from Sarah as the bubble approaches. Another similar demon scampers around a corner and watches Sarah and the scout arrive.
I am the will of this place, the drive to perfection.

[Following a Map]

Arlem considers that this route might have been made simply to have had fun things to climb.
Zafflebrod's again, huh? Samantha has a curious idea of safe. Then again, giant weird spiders are pretty much a daily occurrence.

Perhaps a certain spider annoyed about a wall that opens and closes would have noticed the celestial. Do they have some better way to notice each other? Probably not, but she goes to check anyway, walking confidently through the halls and slipping under the door.

[Murkus]

[Park of Seasons]

"Well, better get it ready and running. I guess I won't get any more informations by hanging out here." he takes a look back at the mages. They haven't changed much, but the green robed gnomes seems to focus on the direction Zefir and Adir hide.

[Park of Seasons]

"I don't know how guns are where you're from, but it's ready to go," Adir says, flashing a half-grin and standing a little more at-the-ready. He waits for... whatever to start, or at least for Zefir's word.

[Devixer]

Red Zone Parking Garage

(Closed Scene)

Uninhabited buildings actually aren't that common around Inside. They tend to either become an impromptu shelter, or they disappear entirely, to make room for whatever thing the Nexus decides it wants in that spot next. In this case, a parking garage has been dragged into the city, along with its inhabitants.

A woman dashes in between cars, dodging plasma fire before taking cover behind a van. Rather than the rifle on her back, she draws the pistol on her hip and crouches low, glancing out at her pursuers. The sight of the green-armored biped gorillas closing in on her is enough to make her duck back into cover and tighten her grip on her weapon as her breath quickens. "Okay, you just need to get some distance, find a signal and call for evac. It can't be that hard, right?" Another bolt of plasma whizzes by the van, making her yelp and take another mad dash for another vehicle.

[Zefir]

[Park of Seasons]

Well, I asumed that Adir isn't running around with a loaded and unlocked rifle. So i thought it's still in his truck.
"They don't even exist." Zefir replies and takes a deep breath befor he steps out of the hiding spot.

The gnome immediatly spots him and makes the others aware of his appereance. The mages turns to them and line up. Zefir walks over to them, assumign Adir is right behind him.

"Didn't we tell you to come alone?" the purple robed figure in the middle asks as they reach hearing range.

"That's the deer person I told you" the woman in the blue robe says. "He was the one with the communication device. I guess he's his minion."

The purple robed man turns to the womaan with a nod then turns to Adir. "Why are you here? Is it your own desire to be here?"

[Fenric]

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

His eyes open wide and a strangled gurgle escapes his lips as his heart stops.

Around the realms beyond physical comprehension, several things happen as Nexus Universal Translation System gets to work making sure all things are true

In the todd's canon universe, the soul operates the body through a quantum-entanglement effect of the neurons in the brain. Once life stops, so also does that effect and therefore from his point of view the Vulpan dies and is now waiting in Limbo to be greeted by a Messenger and be taken off to Myobi's garden for tea and snacks. This is thoroughly uninteresting for the rest of us, so enough of him.

In more standard universes, a dreadful undead spirit comes to posses the body, and so one does. It finds the house emptier than usual, though. But mere microseconds later the energies of unlife bring the brain functions back online, the quantum-entanglement effect resumes, and the unclean spirit is trapped: which has the side effect of imposing the memories and personalities of the dearly departed fox (and rendering resurrection virtually impossible because there's a squatter on the premesis).

So as far as anyone on the outside could hope to tell, his conversion went the way it always does.

Except... there's no precedent for the highly-magical Vulpans. Well, here's what would always happen...

His eyes, once golden amber, flash over to a deep, dark, bloody red. His face shortens and his teeth all reduce in size while under his now death-pale tongue two retractable, long, hollow, needle-sharp hypostomes like drinking straws swiftly form. His red-brown fur darkens to a ruddy chocolate and thins, leaving his once bushy tail a scraggly mess. His claws grow thicker and sharper, and his features more pointed overall. His muscles ripple and shift, bulging and swelling to prodigious power. Meanwhile, the influence of unlife and the vampire's power expand his already considerable innate magical talent and warps his previously cheerful disposition to a dark and twisted evil.

At last, the new creation draws a ragged breath but remains still as if considering it's options.

---

[Carrie's Room]

Arlem has no difficulty, of course, but alas... with Melina's permanent withdrawl from the school, the room has been re-assigned and the poor spider's web was cleaned away. Hopefully she escaped.

[Recaiden]

[Carrie's Room]

Alas. They finally noticed that she was gone.
Becoming the very image of a slightly troublesome student of magic, Arlem paces along the halls somewhere else. Doesn't matter where. The celestial could have had any number of reasons to stay or ways to get distracted.
But for now, it's best to find the door out and follow the map. He can always backtrack here if nothing more likely turns up.

[Ionbound]

[Bubbled Sewer]

Sarah swallows as she reaches the creep, but smiles when she realizes that the creep retreats from her bubble, and mentally replies, "I don't really know. It started when I was 14. Just...Whenever someone didn't know me, it was as if I didn't exist, unless I made myself known to them. And...What do you mean by that? The will of this place?"

[MagMart #621 Parking Lot]

The vampiress licks her lips of the remnants of her meal as she watches the fox change, then smiles and and says to the newborn vampire, "Welcome to the night, dear. What's your name? I figure we should at least get to know each other."