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Meeting: "Hazardous Materials"


Mouse makes a visit to the aquarium to try and find inspiration for her soul capture, and things get depressingly awkward when she meets Ravi, keeper of the Forceful Mistletoe fel essence.

Fate in a Paper Bag


The sky that day was sunny and blue and cheery as ever, graced occasionally by naive little cottonball clouds scooting along with the guidance of a gentle breeze. However, in the direction that Mouse was going, it wasn't going to be like that for very long. The azure atmosphere was slowly dusting away into a grimy gray-brown. A haze of smog overtook the innocent little clouds and destroyed them, yearning to reach even farther and cover the rest of the world with its acrid color and smell. Soon enough, the sky was nothing but a sepia smoke as the world rumbled and creaked from the inside of a grimy old bus with only two other passengers aboard.

In a poor attempt to make the area seem more friendly, a large rusted metal sign protruded from a patch of untamed weeds, inviting those who arrived through this road with "WELCOME TO AEKEA" printed upon it in fading black paint. Smokestacks and buildings stained with the constant air pollution began to grow at an increasing rate, eventually thundering up to surround the groaning vehicle as it trundled further on its tar-stained wheels into the city. The passenger clad in green had a distressed expression on her face as potholes and other such road hazards kept her from keeping stable on her seat. She was already in a mood about as sour as the atmosphere, and taking a three-hour trip to a city that she didn't particularly like in a bus that smelled like cat vomit wasn't really improving things all too much.

However, very unpleasant things must sometimes be endured in order to get things done. This city was the one place anyone could count on if they desperately needed to get something fixed and no other place could offer any help or advice aside from pointing meaningfully at a garbage bin. In the case of the girl in green, this trip was made for the sake of the contents of a small paper bag that was beginning to feel more and more like tissue paper, what with all of the grasping and sweating that had been done to it by her hands over the past eighth of a day. A small hole that had been worried into it by the nail or her pinky finger revealed a weak glint of something that was either glass or metal inside. The bag's holder sighs like she has every half hour or so since boaring the bus, absolutely hating herself for letting this thing break. One of the other few passengers - a woman older than the dirt hanging in the sky - glared disapprovingly before a hydraulic squeak signaled that it was time to get up and find one's destination on foot or by taxi.

And so Mouse went, having to stretch her legs quite a bit in order to clamber down the few stairs to the bus' door, hopping down to the ground while making sure none of the clattering contents in her bag hit the sidewalk. The dull ache that the muscles used to complain about having to move after stagnating for such a long time felt good. That was the feeling of progress, as well as of having control over where she was going.

As to where she was going, well... her free hand reached into her back pocket and fished out a folded piece of paper, permanently creased and curved from being sat on. Nimble, surgical fingers carefully unfolded it and inched it upright so it could be read correctly: a hastily drawn map and an easy-to-follow list of instructions to her desination were there in black ink for her green eyes to behold. She followed the directions like a petite, fleshy automaton would, turning at corners and crossing the white-painted bridges that were the only safe part in streets for pedestrians. It took another half hour or so before she found the place she was looking for.

It was an apartment complex as run-down as all the others, bleak and altogether uninteresting crammed in with the other buildings that could be found in this city. Directly across the street was a family-owned sandwich shop with an "OPEN" sign that seemed all too colorful in comparison to its neighbors. Before heading into the building where she would meet with her repairman, Mouse decided to pay the sandwich shop a short visit. She enjoyed a tuna salad sub and a small cup of potato soup, engaged a generic bit of small talk with the restaurant's owner, and ten minutes later she clipped back across the street and entered the complex. It smelled eerily like the bus she had endured to get here in the first place. Some dissonant and sickly meowings from behind one of many numbered doors were ignored as she walked through a few hallways and climbed a few flights of skeletal, threadbare stairs.

During this trip she was smart enough to not to take the Cloud of Despair with her, so she was thinking a great deal more clearly than she might be otherwise. The soul bottle wasn't hooked into her belt loop, either - she knew for a fact that nothing alive enough to have a soul would willingly live in a city like Aekea. Not only that, but a meek bit of paranoia has whispered to her that such an object might not be entirely safe, and for several reasons. One, of those reasons was obviously that those things were very shiny and must have a lot of value to the right customers. Soul glass wasn't exactly something you could fetch at a hobby shop, after all.

Her small hand rapped impatiently on the door to room 322, where the repairman she was looking for was supposed to live. Hopefully it wasn't too late in the afternoon by now for him to bother with anything, and if that were the case she would do all she could with her small frame and sharp wit to get the damn man to cooperate. Getting nothing done after going such a long distance for it was not an option.

A few muffled footsteps clodded around on the other side of the door, and then there was the clicking sound of latches being released. It finally opened after a few too many seconds of fumbling (with Mouse idly wondering if she could trust a person too clumsy to open a door with the task she had called him a few days ago to ask about), revealing both an unkempt man and parts of the disheveled interior of the apartment. "Oh... right," he muttered oh-so-intelligently with a lazy grin, scratching at his five-o-clock shadow with the tip of an index finger. "You must be that lady who called me three days ago, right? Marsha Ravioli or somesuch? Well, come on in." He backed up in sandaled feet and beckoned his guest inside, intent on leading her towards a nearby table before the petite woman could correct him. She barely muffled an exasperated sigh in response, ending up sounding like she was taking a congested breath instead.

Mouse decided at this point that a coffee-stained stack of papers blocking her from sitting on an available chair at this table wouldn't mind being swept to the ground, if only so she could be accommodated properly as a guest. "Yeah... for the record, I'm called Mouse. Just don't worry about the last name for now," she was finally able to say as the man sat down at the table with a couple of tall glasses of iced tea. Well, at least he knew some things about being hospitable... "And you're Trevor Johnsondale, right?" Accepting her glass and sampling a taste, she managed to force a friendly little smile as she her host returned with his own lopsided smirk.

"Yeah, that's right... good memory!"

"It was in the phone book. The phone book also said that you fix things, and you confirmed this when I called you... well?" Mouse was quickly beginning to feel like a schoolteacher dealing with a particularly dense child even though this visitation had only gone on for about thirty seconds at this point. A small chunk of her patience and a great bit of her sanity was resting on the hopes that Trevor was being so sluggish because he had just gotten some sleep after a long night and morning of working on some sort of engineering project. A questioning noise and a beckoning hand from him suggested that he wanted her to show him what she had come here to get repaired.

The crumpled little paper bag was held above the table, and then slowly tipped over - a flood of parts rained down with a plastic-and-metallic clatter, creating a small and disjointed pile of screws and wires. Trevor picked up a small round piece that looked like it was once a lens of some sort, turning it over in his fingers and gazing at it with a slightly shocked expression that brought a spark of blessed intelligence to his dark blue eyes. He glanced between the piece, the pile, and the person who brought them for a moment until lowering his hand and speaking. "Okay, what's this s'posed to be? Looks to me like it could be a..."

"...digital camera?" Mouse chipped in, finishing the thought with her first honest smile of the entire day.

"Yeah, that," Trevor nodded, poking tentatively at the rest of the parts strewn on the table. He looked afraid that something was going to pop out from beneath them at start gnawing away at his poor finger, what with how utterly ruined the former camera was. The look on his face hinted that he was imagining the green girl sitting across from him simultaneously as a damsel in distress and unwitting hero, trying to piece together what exactly came to pass to ruin this little machine. "What the hell happened to this thing?" he finally asked.

The girl's fingers sheepishly ran through the foliage on her head as she began to chuckle out an explanation. "Well... one of the kids at home got to it. I have this very young child around, she has a thing for taking things apart and what the hell is that?" In midsentence, her voice changed from easygoing and shy to slightly incredulous and alarmed. Her wandering gaze had led her to discover something in the next room, and an index finger that demanded answers pointed irately towards it.

That something was a medium-sized cube, painted white and measuring not much more than a foot and a half on every side. What made it so noticeable and gradually more unbelievable to the young woman was that it was composed of crossing wires that were bent or broken occasionally. The bottom of the wire cube was fitted with a metal tray, also painted white, attached to it by means of thin springs with hooks at either end. Mouse momentarily forgot about what it meant to be a polite guest and hopped out of her chair, beelining towards the small cage to get a better look. She found that the tray was lined by foul-smelling newspapers that could be no younger than six months... but that date was hard to find, as the piles of shed feathers on top of it was a good few inches deep. Her gaze back at Trevor was a veritable death glare, as he hadn't yet answered her question and instead was grinning as though he were extremely proud of himself.

"Oh... that's Charlie! Pretty cool, eh?" he finally responded, more than happy that Mouse had discovered his pet.

The inside of the wire cube was graced by the presence of a dark brown eagle, his head that would otherwise be proud and graceful hunched far beneath his shoulders to compensate for the lack of room. His yellow eyes gazed disdainfully at the unfamiliar face frowning at him before tucking his head back into his body, trying in vain to preen bent and stuck-out feathers back into place. They all had pale bars and speckles adorning them, thanks to Mother Nature - it all looked strangely like tear drops falling on tree bark, with clipped wings and limp tailfeathers. Mouse's arms went slack with disbelief, her fists contorting into balls of rage. "This is a serpent eagle... it belongs in India," she choked out in an angry staccato. "What's it doing here in this box?"

Trevor, oblivious to the implications of his guest's statements, kept his cheer as he responded, "Hahaha, now that was tricky, yeah. I like exotic birds... sortuva hobby, I guess." With a dismissive wave, he beckoned her back over to the table. "But that's not why you're here, right? I think I can fix this thing, but it'll take awhile."

The girl stood there for a few moments as Trevor continued his monologue about fixing the camera, throwing around technical jargon about part replacement and wire attachment. He was still only just beginning to explain the work it would take, essentially having to rebuild the entire device, and Mouse manages to focus on the matter at hand and pull away. Besides, she thought to herself, there wasn't really anything she could do. Aekea laws were all about robots and machines and waste management. The politicians and lawmakers here had almost nothing in the way of animal rights besides the 'obvious' ideas like "don't eat dog meat" and "you can love cats, but they can't be your lovers". Understanding nods and occasional questions surrounding the topic of the repair and manufacture of digital cameras were made for the next while until they came to a series of mutal agreements and Mouse numbly left the apartment building.

The darkening haze surrounding the city eventually gave way to a deep purple dusk with slowly awakening stars as another bus with a lone passenger rumbled back towards Barton.

Meeting: "Comfort Food"


Mouse and Fredmitri raise some heads at Cafe Jubilee, and are rewarded with a rooftop dessert with the cafe's owner, Natsuki. Crazy world - and small, too, as Natsuki also turns out to be a future Raevan guardian.

Fixing up the Attic


Dust. Soot. Cracks. Dust. Debris. Dust. Leaks. Drafts. Old leaves. Dust. Rotting rafters. Dust. Dust.

Like the site of an indoor blizzard composed of tiny domestic particles, all of that damned dust!

Mouse sat at the bottom of the stairs to her attic, coughing as if someone had just dared her to try a cigarette. Her hair had become gray speckled with black, as did her clothes, and even her skin had managed to absorb some of that color. She looked like a ghost, and right now almost wished she could be one if only her lungs would stop crying for mercy. Man. Cleaning could be hard. This was the third day of nonstop work she had done on her recently-discovered upstairs room. It still looked like nobody had been up there in at least fifty years. She almost muttered something to herself, but instead ended up choking out a phlegmy gag that would turn the head of a sick cat.

Just in her line of vision, a glass of water bobbled through the doorway to her kitchen and shook insistently at her feet. She emptied the entire thing in an instant, saying "Thanks." with her voice still a bit mottled by the situation upstairs. As much as she insisted that they didn't have to be her servants... well. The kikimora seemed to like making sure she was doing fairly well, and their presence was definitely helpful. It was sometimes almost as if her fel essence wasn't around trying to corrupt the emotional atmosphere of her home.

In any case, there was still a lot of work to be done, and the odd little creatures haunting her attic enjoyed reminding her of that. Maybe it was the work ethic that was lifting the mood of the home - that sort of thing wasn't quite an emotion; people could still push on ahead and get things done even when they were miserable. "Alright, alright, just let me.... dust myself off a bit." A couple of them had started to tug at the bottom of her shirt to try to get her back upstairs. Did they think housework was fun?

The to-do list in the kitchen was a perpetual reminder that today was a cleaning day. Tomorrow, she would find furniture for a future member of the family that wouldn't have to sit for quite some time.

Unlatching a Cage


This time, the grimy bus that shuttled commuters to and from the city of Aekea contained more than a child's handful of people. One of these people, in a soft brown jacket and grass-stained shoes, was turning a head or two as her feathery green hair swept through the air, the head attached to it ravenously tearing into an English muffin. Occasionally a hazel-flecked eye would glare at the disapproving glances, chastising them for the negative attention.

Mouse was hungry, dammit. She had left early in the morning thinking she'd have no appetite, but two hours of ignoring the pangs of her stomach later the emergency rations in her pocket had been fished out and given no remorse. Screw all the people who were concerned that crumbs were flying all over the place; it wasn't as if any of them would have to clean it up later. They didn't have to deal with the weighted thoughts that she was having about her destination. So she gave all the looks in the book to the small handful of idiots that were staring, content with the fact that she would most likely never see any of them again.

And then there was hydraulic squeaking of brakes that would never be fully functional as the monster finally stopped. A strange little chuckle escaped from the green-haired girl - Eiry. She could just imagine the look on his face if he had to board an absolute monstrosity like this. It lifted her mood some, knowing that what she was doing was in some way for the sake of him, and Roux, and Natsuki's Raevan... after this task was done, it would only take some waiting until they all had a potential friend.

Sidewalk... crosswalk... turn here, cut across the street here... there's the sandwich shop-- and the apartment building! Stairs, stairs, creaky stairs, still smells like dust and sick cats in here... room 302... 307... 316... 320... 322. Room 322.

322.

For several minutes, Mouse just... stands there in front of the door, staring blankly at the number. To a stranger walking down the hallway and unlocking the door to her own room, this green-and-brown-clad visitor probably looked calm enough, probably just wondering if that particular tenant was home or not. In reality, though, her insides were somehow both frozen solid and vibrating hotly with anticipation and anxiety. She had no idea what she would do when she got in there, or even if she had the nerve to do it; at the same time, a braver part of her being was impatiently scolding her, daring her to explain how she deserved to feel so nervous when other people had risked their entire lives for the sake of Dr. Kyou's projects. They had caught beautiful creatures, terrifying monsters, trapped spirits, even the steed of a god... and here she was waffling about taking the soul of a sick bird owned by an aloof electronics repairman. It was, most likely, largely due to that irritable voice of reason that her hand suddenly extended and rapped on the door.

There was a quiet shuffling, a muffled plodding of footsteps, and after a latchkey click the number got thinner and thinner until it was no longer there, and in its place was the messy apartment with half-disassembled laptops and sharp green motherboards scattered around the floor. The stubblefaced Trevor stood sleepily in the middle of it all, thoroughly oblivious to the intensity in his short visitor's gaze. "Hey, you're that... uh, I called you a few days ago, right? You're here for the..."

"Camera, yes. The discombobulated one that came here in a small paper bag," Mouse finished for him, arms loosely crossed. Her voice was punctuated, impatient and expecting, talking like that mostly in the hopes that the man would process her words a little faster.

He stood there for quite some time, the hamster in his head most likely starting to hyperventilate from the exhaustion as it fervently worked to get thoughts working. It was obvious that, despite how distinct her case was, this man was leafing through a catalog in his head of all of the work he had done, quadruple-checking to make sure that he had the camera that his visitor was speaking of. A smile crept onto his face after what must have been at least two minutes of awkwardly standing and waiting there. "Oh, yeah, that one..." and pivoting around with a friendly wave, he said "Come on in and I'll dig it up for ya."

Ugh. He might have been borderline idiot savant, but he was still a nice guy. Guilt was starting to creep up and nothing had even happened yet - Mouse's intensity flickered a bit at that as she was allowed inside, sitting back at the table from before and using the shuffling of papers she knocked off of the floor to mask a sigh that was a cocktail of worries. One of her hands reached into her pocket, lightly gripping the cool glass orb that was in there. Just a little longer and something would come to her. An opportunity or idea, didn't matter which... she just had to wait it out and see. She wasn't sure if she believed in such a thing as fate, but it had definitely led her here if it existed.

Trevor weaved his way to and fro through the rooms, shuffling through clutter and peeking into drawers, probably looking for routine paperwork as well as the fixed camera. Whenever his back was turned, Mouse would crane her neck over past the table, trying to peek into the room that Charlie the eagle was in. Only the corner of the cage was visible, though, but that corner told her that he wasn't any better off than he was a month or so ago. The litter of feathers had just about doubled in depth; they were sticking out between the wires and threatening to spill out over the floor. If she had known what serpent eagles sounded like, her mind probably would have provided her with pitiful little starved cries. Instead there was only silence, which in all honesty wasn't that much better.

"Here ya go."

As if a rubber band had hit her ear, Mouse flinched and jerked her head back to reality. "What?"

"Here's your camera. Don't you remember? You brought it here, I fixed it... here it is." Trevor sounded rightfully exasperated as he dangled the camera in question by its wrist strap in front of her.

And the green girl had to admit that she was impressed: not a single piece of tape on there, it looked like it had just been taken from the store. She gingerly let it drop into her hands, taking a good look at it. Standing up and holding it in front of her, she asked, "Looks good, but does it work?" As if it needed to be said. Trevor said something along the lines of 'of course it does'-- Mouse really wasn't paying attention-- as she turned it on and checked out the room from the tiny screen on the back of it. The two shared an honest smile as she darted the camera about the room, and the girl backed away a few feet, getting the repairman's droopy face in frame... and a few more steps, now it would be a bust-up shot...

Creeeeeaaaaaaaak. Her shoulder brushed against the door and gently encouraged it to open, despite the complaints of the hinges, and her smile suddenly vanished as her eyes turned towards the wire cube, illuminated by the yellow light of the other room... the camera was turned off and shoved into a pocket, and her hand emerged from it with something that would capture more than images.

"Hey..."

Mouse responded to the voice only by letting her eyes drag themselves back towards Trevor. Her arm with the soul bottle fell to her side for a moment, and she continued to look at him blankly, free hand slowly floating upward. Without a sound, her fingers made it to the side of the cage and slowly traced town its wire walls, making their way towards the latch. Charlie sat there, just as silent, gaze equally blank yet focusing intensely on how those fingers gripped that little metal rod.

"Hey... what are you doing?"

The frail serpent eagle chanced the thought that it could do the same thing those fingers were doing. Fighting its instincts to stay still and conserve his energy, he craned his head forward and squeezed his beak through the bars, gripping the latch just under Mouse's thumb. It all made sense now, how this thing worked. The man-thing would use this latch to dump in food he didn't like, but ate anyway because it was all that was available... at first it seemed like something only humans could do, but now... this other human... responded, as nonchalantly as someone would being asked about a trip to the grocery store, "Setting him free." and, with the tear-stained bird using the last of its strength to help, opened the door.

Immediately the hand holding the soul bottle shot up to touch the helping beak, still clinging to the latch it had lifted. The grip slackened instantly, there was a little rushing noise-- a slow ethereal whirlwind spun its way into the transparent sphere. Trevor stood there dumbstruck and in shock, clearly having no idea what had happened or how to react, even as his visitor slowly made her way out the room, back past the table, to the door that had the number 322 printed on its other side. Her eyes were transfixed on the eagle's soul the entire time.

She wanted to say something, but all the words she gave the poor man amounted to "You'll get a check in the mail... have a nice day."

During the bus ride back home she slept, content with the fact that she would never see him again.

Headless Horseman's Halloween


The Delaran House held a Halloween Spooktacular and everyone was invited! Dressed as a headless horseman (with Fredmitri playing the part of her jack-o-lantern head), Mouse had some fun times and met some people, and Head-mitri made a new friend.

Meeting: The Waiting Game


Mouse's tendency to have random encounters with other Raevan owners is made all the more apparent when she runs into Julian and Gage at a bookstore, of all places.

(( This meeting is being postponed until later. ))