[Nicolay]

Or Nicolay -- who decided to look away and give the pair a solid clearing of throat that went, “A-hem!” his hands held behind him while he engrossed himself with Kiel's wall -- a Champion of Plainness. When Kiel had leaned over to rest his head on Phenny, he did think it was cute. It was a nice thing for lovers to do and he respected that Kiel might have just been very relieved that Brute and Non-brute hadn't touched his girl -- and Phenny reciprocated the expression. But when they had prolonged the gesture for a part 2, he figured it was time to intervene. This was Kiel's house for all he cared but...visitor much? Third person in the house much?

He made no further verbal comments on it as he moved to Phenny's open side and leaned over to rest his palms and his weight at the top of the couch, looking at the note that she held. Everything it had on it just went over Nicolay's head so he made no second effort to contribute. He did, however, have an idea to offer up. “You know, if you don't understand it, why not give it to the guards?” And actually-- “Actually, shouldn't you not be...joining...into this? This is something to do with murder, right?” his voice finally picked up some form, albeit modest, of alarm. “Shouldn't the...authorities!” he finally found the word, “be the ones doing this?” He couldn't understand how he couldn't have offered that suggestion earlier, instead of just taking things as they came and riding along the waves with or without his understanding. He blamed it to the brutish pair. That thing they did was not conducive to proper, sensible thinking.

[Kiel]

If Kiel had realised what Nic thought of him and Phenny being all huggy, he'd have laughed uproariously and then jerked to his feet in horror to tell the smaller guy to take it back. Like, partly it would have been to defend Phenny's honour or something, but mostly it would've been 'cause he didn't want Nic getting any of them in trouble by accidentally suggesting he and Phenny were more than friends if he ever met Kiel's actual boyfriend.

Thankfully, he wasn't his mom or his siblings, so he couldn't read the dude's mind. He did hear the embarrassed cough, though, and while Kiel wasn't normally so sensitive to people's, like, sensibilities and stuff, he did quit leaning.

Only for Phenny to lean instead, hahahahaha.

It wasn't long before he was fidgeting, though, so when Phenny mentioned something about paper and writing, he was soon on his feet to pat himself down.

“Well, like. You're probably right, man, but, like, you know. They already tried taking Isabel in - that's, like, this vamp chick Phenny just met,” he explained, like it was okay to be defying the law and its enforcers for a total near-stranger. “And when Phenny tried to defend her and this, like, teeny baby, right, this kid and her mom, they got all "rawr"-y at her and tried to arrest her too, and then she defended herself and kinda censored them off and now they want to arrest her too. Except, like, I don't think it's cool for them to want to be arresting people just 'cause they have fangs, you know? I mean, like, what if you had fangs?” Pulling back his upper lip, Kiel made a cheesy vampire imitation, his hands out as claws as he hissed.

“Besides,” he tacked on, the word garbled by the fact that he still had his upper teeth exposed. “The authorities aren't really equipped for this kinda thing, you know? They don't investigate much, so we're as good as anybody, right?

Ahah!” Yanking out a pen and small Hello Kitty notebook from his pants pockets, he held them up triumphantly, then "Wah"'d when he realised the notebook was his sister's, and tried to pass it to Phenny while also hiding it from Nic. “That's totally not mine, man, hehehehehe.”

To distract from the girliness, Kiel rounded the sofa to get a look at the coded message again, elbowing Nic with a giggle. “You know, that's gotta be, like, what do you call it. A contraction, right, where the apostrophe is? Like, hasn't.” He made a great show of not pronouncing the "o" that the apostrophe represented in that word. “Except it's only got one letter after it so maybe it's, like. I dunno.” As he verbally ran through a list of contractions, he yelled, “S! It's an s! Like, that's a start, right?”

[Nicolay]

Nicolay tensed and froze when Kiel had mentioned "Isabel" in their conversation, sucking in breath and holding it in as he watched Kiel with a ready anticipation. But the older man added that she was a vampire, and his breath left him in one smooth blow. It was a different Isabel. The thought made him chuckle inwardly a bit -- what would Issy do in a place like this?

The smile weakened into a sadder one, his eyes on his feet. Well, Elysia was definitely a better choice than 'nowhere'. Too bad all Elysia's got was a vampire named like his sister...

He was half-listening to Kiel's lecture -- about the authorities arresting this vampire and Phenny (ahh, so that's why) and the trouble had with a mother and her child and how their investigation would be just as good as anyone's but his mind had successfully made a trip elsewhere -- of how things would truly be so much better if Issy was around, then she was just a few miles away from him and they could go home together. Oh what joy would have been in his parents' faces if they saw both of them walking through the front door -- his parents who are probably worried sick for both of them now. He felt bad about what's happened.

It was Kiel's nudging that hauled him out of his surface reverie and he stretched his smile back wide at the man while he joined him in viewing the coded message and listened to his grammar lesson. It...made no sense, though.

Nicolay's brows furrowed and he frowned a little, now devoted into cracking the code as that would at least get him somewhere rather than wallowing in his bad luck. “Izvemsh?” he tried. That did not sound like a word.

At least to him, it didn't.

OOC: If it's okay, Nic isn't about to know of Issy's existence at this point in time yet. Think this is what Amber and I discussed.

[Euphenia]

Phen had grumbled playfully when Kiel popped up like a jackrabbit after a carrot, but mostly to distract herself from the blush trying to dominate her face. Nicolay had thought ... She could see his reasoning, though it was embarrassing to be the subject of such a presumption. As Nicolay was Kiel's friend, Phen wasn't going to let things slide. What if Nicolay somehow met Zephyr? Phen wasn't going to be a cause of heartbreak for her best friend. Not ever.

However, it was Kiel's business to let the man know that he was taken by Zeph, right? Phen remembered a time when the dracovari was heavily in denial of his possibly being "gay", and she was pretty sure that hadn't changed. So the nyad chose to be subtle. "Kiel, thanks for your presence just then," Phen offered nonchalantly with a smile as she accepted the Hello Kitty notepad and pen, not even noticing the girlie qualities of the first item. Not at first, anyway. "You're a real comfort, my friend."

Feeling that her rococo turn of phrase would clear any remaining misunderstanding about her and Kiel's relationship, Phen took a moment to examine the cover of the notepad to try and figure out what Kiel was on about. "Is that a cat? It's unlike any art style I've seen before."

The guys were moving on to trying to decipher the code. Phen did so, too, but only after filing away Nicolay's reaction to Isabel's name. Did he know her? That might prove problematic. Hoping for the best but trying to figure out how to handle the worst, Phen flipped the notepad open and peered at the portion of the message that Kiel had pointed out. She wondered just what could go wrong if Nicolay had something against Isabel. She would ask the vampiress about it later, before she introduced them.

Thankfully, a distraction from the recent possible complication was well at hand. "I think you're right, Kiel!" Phen exclaimed, hastily scribbling down the code on the first available sheet of notepaper. Under the 'h of the code, she wrote 's. "And maybe, that means that all of the Hs are really Ss!"

Oh yeah, she was getting into it! Phen added more Ss under Hs, then on a whim put Hs under Ss. "That makes sense, right? An equal exchange?" She showed Nicolay and Kiel the new version of the coded message with what she hoped was the developing translation underneath it.

Quote

Yvwilxp zmw Izevm'h Dzb.
Gsivv ivw hglmvh. Hglk. Ivkvzg.
Dsrgv hdzm lm z drwld'h mvxp.
Yzxp gl Y.

H

Quote

Yvwilxp zmw Izevm's Dzb.
Ghivv ivw sglmvh. Sglk. Ivkvzg.
Dhrgv sdzm lm z drwld's mvxp.
Yzxp gl Y.

S

Piper's Boutique # Raine # Celestial Star # DaFont # Angel

[Kiel]

Kiel was still clueless. He had absolutely no idea what Nic was thinking, or why Phenny was thanking him for being a friend since, like, you know, it was just natural to him. He was just a haptic kinda guy, you know?

He hadn't missed the way Nic tensed up when he mentioned Isabel, though, but since it was part of a whole story full of things he could have gotten freaked out about, Kiel wasn't sure which one had upset him. Like, the thought of people being arrested for having fangs, or people having fangs at all? He was pretty new here, you know, and by all accounts Earth didn't have, like, vamps and stuff, you know, so maybe he didn't know vamps existed? Or was he tense 'cause he'd realised that kids were being harassed too?

Well, it was enough to freak out anyone, you know. Except for, like, Zeph, and Kiel kinda figured that was mostly 'cause the dude would just eat anyone who tried to arrest him.

Or get Slythe to.

“I dunno about an equal exchange, man.” Kiel tipped his hat off to scratch his head, then tugged it back into place none the wiser. “Like, I dunno, if it was me, I'd be all, like, shuffle them along a bit. You know, so like, if H is S, then um. I comes after H, right, and T after S, so I'd think I was T, and, like, J was U and stuff, you know?

But, like, maybe we can start with the two-letter words and go from there. What's got two letters in it? Hahahaha, in, it. Is. To? Go. Okay, so, like, there are way more words with two letters in than I thought...” For once, he didn't revert to his whole "if Zeph were here" fan-boying. He knew betterthis time, hahahahaha. “Why is there a full stop after a single word, though, man? You don't normally get that, right? Like, right?”

[Nicolay]

“Because it is supposed to be secret,” Nicolay turned to his friend beside him as he spoke, sounding as though cracking the code was such a cakewalk and Kiel was totally missing the whole point of it in spite of his juvenile accent and how he would have preferred to say 'cryptic' except he didn't know the Elysian for that. “When secrets are writed, there are no complete sentences. Because then, the...secret is easy to know.” Or however the hell that is said in Elysian! God this language. Nicolay could almost see his well of knowledge getting all dried up.

“But what you said about the letters make sense,” he said as he glanced at the notebook Phenny held. “That was what I said a moment ago. Except H is...” he counted, “seventeen letters away from S. But we can try? Make I to T and ever...is that “Hello Kitty”?” Nicolay half-gaped as he leaned closer to the pad so that his head was beside Phenny's brows arched as his eyes confirmed the pale pink paper, the white lines and the pink-stroked, white figure of Hello Kitty watering her garden. “There is “Hello Kitty” here?” Who would have thought!

[Euphenia]

Though she'd been listening to whatever her companions had to say, Phen was fully enthralled by the code by the time Nicolay took over the conversation. As a result, the nyad really only caught the last part of it, which was mostly because the words "Hello Kitty" seemed to have something to do with the odd imagery on the cover and paper sheets of the notepad Kiel had generously let her use. "Does that have some significance?" she asked Nicolay before she remembered that the therian wasn't fully versed in Elysian. So she swung her attention over to Kiel and added, "I may have seen the design hereabouts, but its definitely not something to be found in the Fae Forest. What's this 'Hello Kitty', Kiel?"

"I think we can figure this out," Phen decided, refreshing her focus on the note before her. She promptly went back to looking over the coded message, occasionally running a finger over a few of the jumbled up words. "Let's try a direct exchange for each letter and see if we can't come up with some actual words."

With that, Phen set herself to the task with the same determination she applied to anything the nyad devoted her time to. A couple of hours later, with input from Kiel and Nicolay, they had made significant progress. Phen felt fully confident that the theory of direct exchange was sound. It made the code easier to crack than she'd anticipated, but by then Phen wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. "I think we've got it!" she decided with a firm nod, "Here, see for yourselves."

Quote

Yvwilxp zmw Izevm'h Dzb.
Gsivv ivw hglmvh. Hglk. Ivkvzg.
Dsrgv hdzm lm z drwld'h mvxp.
Yzxp gl Y.

H

Quote

Bedrock and Raven's Way.
Three red stones. Stop. Repeat.
White swan on a widow's neck.
Back to B.

S

"What do you think?" Phen asked, holding up the page and showing it to Kiel and Nicolay, "That sounds right to me, though it still doesn't make much sense."

Just then, the sound of numerous hand bells chiming "Our Beloved Butterfly", a once popular New Alexandrian hit, announced from the other side of the room that Euphenia had a new text message waiting. It started sweet and low, but soon the noise swelled to be quite obnoxious. "I thought I set it to vibrate!" Phen fretted as she fought to disentangle herself from the couch.

Scurrying across Kiel's living room floor, Phen scooped up her satchel and swiped her COM from its holster. Quickly she tapped its screen a couple of times, and the chiming stopped. "Sorry about that," she tossed over her shoulder with a sheepish smile, then worked on putting her COM in the proper setting. "Wouldn't that have been great timing? Oh, we're in a dark alley looking for evidence, I hope no one notices us," Phen muttered sarcastically under her breath.

Once she was sure her COM wouldn't be regaling them with the quality of its ring tones again any time soon, Phen finally read the message. "It's from Izzy," she confirmed after a moment, "I'm going to tell her to sneak over here, and to use the back door. Ah, you do have a back door, don't you, Kiel?"

Phen sure hoped he did, because her reply had already been sent.

Quote

Title: Come on Over!
From: Bubbles

Come to my friend's place. I've included the address. Use the back door.

I'm glad you're alright, and I hope we can piece things together.

Use caution. Try not to be followed. Stay safe, and we'll see you soon!

Sat, Jun 26 2:23pm

(( Sorry for the bit of GMing there. Just trying to move things along a bit. Please let me know if I need to change anything. ))

Piper's Boutique # Raine # Celestial Star # DaFont # Angel

[Kiel]

“Wah, wah! I'm not a girl!” That was the sum of Kiel's response to being questioned about his sister's frou-frou notebook, before he totally seized on the subject of decrypting this stupid message. “Oh, like, sorry, man, I thought you meant something else, you know? But, like, yeah.”

Luckily, Phenny totally kept them focused (more or less) for a while, and they eventually had a working message. Except, like, “That thing still makes no sense, man. Nic's right, secrets make nooooo sense,” he sighed, totally warping what Nic had actually said. “Well, anyway, we know Bedrock and Raven's Way, right? They're streets, you know? Well, like, Bedrock's not the actual street name but, you know. People are weird. Maybe the white swan's a pub or something, or, like, a custom?” Slumping his chin into his palm, Kiel moped over his lack of awesomeness.

Then promptly shot to his feet when Phenny's COM went off. “Dude! Hey, I know that song. Hahahahaha, it's a new hit, right? Like, well, about a year ago or something.” New to him, at least. Dardanos always got stuff later than the mainland, but his sister had played that song on, like, total repeat for a week before their dad threatened to smash her COM and Hop to stop her.

“Like, dude, yeah, man, Phenny. What if we'd made a total racket in that alleyway, hahahahaha.” He grinned impishly at her, seeing as he'd been making more noise with Nic than her COM had just now.

“Um, well, like, the kitchen door opens out into the fields, she can come in that way. Except, like, tell her not to let the field imps in with her, okay? I just got done swiping out the last lot and they eat more than I do.” He giggled again, fidgeting on his feet. Him and Zeph never used the kitchen door but Shane sometimes phased through it as a shortcut. “Oh, and to watch out for the landlady next door, okay, she's totally got eyes in the back of her head or something, man. And to keep hold of the door 'cause, like, sometimes there's this wind that comes off the fields and sucks the door shut. Zephyr totally got his ankle caught in it once, but when I told him it was just his name catching up with him, 'cause, like, you know, zephyr means, like, breeze or something, he just glared at me. I don't think his name suits him, you know, he's more like, like, totally a hurricane gale, hahahahahaha! But that's why we don't use that door much, you know,” he explained despite not actually having told them that they didn't use the kitchen door, and chattering away even if they weren't listening to him to begin with, “'cause it sucks. Hahahahahaha, it sucks. I made a pun, hahahahahaha!”

Pause for breath.

“If she can't find the place, tell her about that dead stump out front, okay? It has, like, ginormous teeth marks in it from when Ani tried gnawing it down so it'll be totally easy to find us with that, like, right? Anybody want snacks?”

[Nicolay]

“That's not what I said,” Nicolay protested to Kiel with a half-gaped mouth and arched brows. “I said secrets aren't easy, that they're...oh forget it.” The vocabulary he required still exceeded his comprehension.

So he let it off and decided to just focus on trying to help them with the code -- after reiterating, of course, his first suggestion of decryption where A was Z and B was Y. But quite shamefully, Nicolay had little to no assistance offered, having distracted himself mostly with Kiel's eyes, Phenny's wings, that loose thread on the couch or when he went and served water to everyone. He would have offered to cook snacks for everyone (because he was getting pretty hungry) except he didn't know Elysian cuisine and only really knew how to do eggs. And that obviously wouldn't go as far as he'd wished it would. If he and Kiel had been closer friends, though, he would have opened the all the cupboards the very second he stepped in but alas, such was not the case.

In a nutshell, all Nicolay mostly did was watch the two friends converse in Elysian, smile, nod and agree as they solved the code. He would lie if he said he wasn't bored.

He decided to distract himself by asking to go to the bathroom and heading up to relieve himself in time for the fun tune that played in Phenny's COM -- and that was when he saw in his own eyes how much time had really passed. The day's light had changed and he remembered that he only meant to go out and apply for a job...

And he was really pretty freaking hungry now.

He decided that it's been a long day for him. Returning to the pair (just after Kiel had invited for snacks), Nicolay said to them, “Hi, umm...I need to go now. I'm sorry. It's late. They might look for me.” He really did try to look apologetic when he said that.

[Euphenia]

Kiel's denial of girlishness aside, Phen was heartened by how easy her friend was to keep on task. Had she the time, she might of sought a water source other than her necklace and tried Shaping him a reward. Not that the nyad was skilled enough to make her Shapings last longer than a few minutes. That would require the efforts of a Master Shaper, which Phen assuredly was not. Yet.

She'd tried to involve Nicolay in deciphering the code, but the therian seemed to have a really short attention span. Even shorter than Kiel's, which was remarkably strange. Phen considered mentioning just that, but decided against it. She didn't need to nitpick, no matter how gutsy being around Kiel made her feel. They'd translated the message and that's what mattered, right? "We're here and we're mostly safe," Phen said in retort to Kiel's playful jibe at her COM being on ring. She even shook the device at him for effect. "And if it'd gone off, then I'd have raced you home."

The nyad grinned at Kiel, showing off lots of pearly whites. They both knew who would win a foot race between them. Phen would have been eating Kiel's dust.

"I've always loved the song," she added in response to Kiel's sharing of his sister's taste in music. She whirled about with the notepad in one hand, her COM in the other. "When I saw it was available as a ring tone, I couldn't resist!"

Why did she suddenly have a yen for one of Kiel's roast beef sandwiches? "Now that you mention it, Kiel, I haven't eaten lunch yet ... By the Lady's wings! I haven't been to the quadrangle today!"

Phen ran over, then tossed her COM into her satchel before she yanked the bag up. Flinging the satchel's strap over an arm and shrugging it into place, she held out the Hello Kitty notepad to Kiel. "I'll text Isabel about this," she promised, her twilight eyes wide, "But my duties to Xanth can't be put off. I'm sorry, Kiel, I just didn't realize that so much time had already pass-What?"

The nyad turned around and blinked. Twice. "Oh. Are you sure you want to go alone?" she asked, "I'm presuming that by 'they' you mean the men that came here earlier?"

"Oh, for the love of little green apples," Phen muttered as she smacked her forehead with the notepad she'd been offering out to Kiel, "What am I thinking? I can't go out there, not looking like this. I have to get a disguise or something."

She rounded on Kiel, her eyes flashing with a bright idea. "Kiel! Do you have any clothes you wear just to do chores in?"

Piper's Boutique # Raine # Celestial Star # DaFont # Angel

[Kiel]

“Wah! You're leaving? You're both leaving?” He was going to be alone, and Phenny was just, like, walking out there even though she was on the world's most, like, wanted felons or something list, and Nic was leaving and Kiel hadn't even fed him yet, and he was supposed to figure out this clue by himself? “Wah!” He didn't want to figure this out all by himself, you know? and, like, what if Phenny was captured, right, and they tried to pull out her teeth with pliers or something 'cause they thought she was a vampire or something or just to punish her for embarrassing them when she helped Issy, and then they tortured her into telling them where Issy herself was and then he really was left all alone?

Kiel was jostled out of his macabre by the thought that she'd told Issy to meet them here, but then he realised that there'd still be trouble if Phenny left. Even in a disguise, man, she wear frumpy man clothes and she could dye her hair all colours of the rainbow, but those wings on that body would still be pretty distinctive. What if the other dudes had only been told to watch out for a half-breed Nymph/Anyeli, and not anything more specific than that?

What if she was caught and he couldn't protect her or save? His manliness was in question, here!

“Like, yeah, no. All my clothes are awesome,” he stalled, totally ignoring the making-house-awesome clothes stashed in the wardrobe upstairs and his training vest and pants in the laundry (which, like, damn, she'd seen pretty regularly on their runs together but maybe she'd forget or not want them 'cause they were still all sweaty and horrible from this morning).

To Nic, he grumbled, “Are you sure you gotta leave, man? This sucks, this sucks. I was gonna cook something way cool for you, you know? Like, but be careful, okay, 'cause they shouldn't bug you now I told them you're Therian, right, 'cause of that whole Therians dying and becoming monsters if they're infected thing, but they kinda seem like idiots so maybe they will. Just tell 'em you're Therian, okay, man? Therian, Therian!” he sang, clapping the younger kid on the shoulder by way of reassurance. He wasn't repeating himself 'cause he thought Nic was dumb, far from it. He was just making sure the dude understood what to say.

It occurred to him then that maybe Phenny wouldn't leave if Nic was already gone, so as if he'd just remembered something, he clicked his fingers together and pointed up at the ceiling with one finger extended. “Dude! My making-house-awesome clothes. They're totally in the wardrobe, right, all paint-splattered and stuff. You want them, man?” Hopefully she'd race upstairs to get them and he could ever-so-politely get Nic to leave without her.

Well, like. He didn't want the dude to leave at all 'cause he liked Nic's company, despite the language barrier - which, by the way, “Awesome improvements, man!” he complimented as if his thoughts had been vocalised the whole time - but if he was leaving, he needed to go before Phenny decided to tag along.

[Nicolay]

Nicolay never thought his leaving would merit so much attention from the pair. He almost felt guilty but his stomach and impatience eventually ruled over his decisions.

“N, no, my...” he began to answer Phenny with a gesture out the door, “Carers,” he said. “The people I living with. They might look for me.” He repeated.

When Kiel made a protest to his imminent departure, though, Nicolay flashed him a small smile, a little sad but heartfelt. The guy sounded like a kicked puppy and he appreciated it.

He nodded at his advices and the hand on his shoulder while he lifted his own right and patted Kiel solidly twice on the arm before giving the limb a firm squeeze. “I will remember,” he said. “I feel sad I will miss your food but next time, all right?” There always was a next time. “I will ask for food next time.” He dropped his hand and stepped back to allow Kiel room for moving when he indicated to the panicking Phenny his upstairs room and he glanced at her while the other male explained its significance.

It was only when Kiel complimented him on his Elysian that Nicolay looked back to him -- and he beamed. “Thank you! That is nice to know.” He was probably waiting for Kiel to say that, anyway.

When he could, he called for Shane and crouched with his hands reaching out to play with her. He never had the chance to reconcile with the feline fellow and he didn't want to leave without having done so even just for a bit.

[Isabel]

Isabel was too preoccupied following Bubbles' directions that she had failed to notice anyone following her. A mistake she shouldn't have made knowing what she and the others are about to do. Catching sight of the field, Isabel took a short detour taking care to walk where Kiel's neighbour wouldn't get to see her. It would be pretty awkward if she was found sneaking about and trying to enter through the backdoor.
Quickly locating the dead stump that Bubbles mentioned, Isabel had no trouble locating the back door. Just then, a breeze went pass blowing her hair towards her face. As she reached the door quietly while trying to put her hair in some semblance order, Isabel saw one or two imps scuttling about probably trying to look for a way to get past her. Silly creatures. It reminded her greatly of her own imps back home. They'd probably be hungry by now... if they hadn't escaped their cage and ransacked her apartment.

Taking a deep breath, Isabel knocked a few times softly on the door. Then, thinking that she might not have been heared, she knocked a little louder.

[Official NPC]

He'd been tailing the girl since she'd left the Crypt. She'd damn near given him the slip twice, but she wasn't the first canary he'd plucked.

So many simple things, lining up in a row. A knock on a door. A glance. A nod. A waving of hands. Topple one, and they all smack into the others. A possible Fate, ruined.

The fields weren't ideal for hiding places, but he made do, hanging back so she wouldn't spot him as long as as she didn't know what to look for. He'd learn who she was meeting with, then go and make his report. He wasn't being paid enough to go into the building.

... What was that smell? Old incense? Who burned incense in a field? He held still. To move would be to give himself away. He'd figure it out, and then act.

"Fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of an Elysian."

The words could have been whispered by the sweet lips of a little girl, but they lacked the innocence of youth. The giggle that flowed into the end of the phrase chilled him to the bone. It was just so wrong. Where was it coming from?! He twitched and tried to search with all of his senses.

"Crack!"

"Fingers, fingers, how they feel. You aren't even worth a meal."

The man in black was held up by someone feminine and slight. His head lolled to one side, at an angle that necks shouldn't allow.

"Stupid mouse didn't see. The cat, humans can not be."

Bright violet eyes widened and blood red hair was twirled around a bloodless finger. "Play the game, hope to win. Till we meet again, my friend. This is their Fate, don't interfere. Else I'll bring our Bailey here."

Giggling again, the girl-woman spun and ran away from the scene, carrying her prize over one shoulder like a sack of wheat.

(( This thread has been closed.

Euphenia, Isabel, Kiel, and Txelu are moving on to a new thread to seek out the meaning of the decoded message. Nicolay may or may not be joining them in the future.

Happy rolepaying! ))