In the Research Department...

Thale, as many of local Fey already know, is one of the those Fey who have discovered that the Human adoration of physical beauty is something a Fey can easily exploit.. well, Goblins and the like excepted.  Thale and a few others have realized that if you are good looking enough, just get into the right circles and humans will trip over themselves trying to be nice to you.  And they will believe everything you say.  Life can be very easy, especially for a High Elf like Thale who decided long ago that hard work or deep thought were too boring to waste much of life on.

"It's a lot like Gremian's story," Dennis says.  "Breeze met Thale, but said he was distant, strange, lost in his human identity.  Not noticing other Fey.  Confused when she mentioned flying.  She called me, a little while ago.. you know she doesn't usually come by here."

For Fey that have too much exposure in the human world, that was often seen as a wise choice.  Keep some distance, don't give the humans too much to ask questions about.  The Veil was powerful... but no one really knew just how far it could hide things.

"We do have to start an investigation, as soon as we can.  As I said I strongly suspect a third victim."


At the Reception Desk...

Edna nods as well.  That's good.  It's what she hoped for.  But... there was only so far she could take it.  One must tread carefully around the magic of the Elves, if one didn't know the reason for things.  Alisa must learn what she is meant to learn... her way.

"I don't know how much you've overheard today.  Quite an... issue going on.  I understand you might not want to run off with strangers.  But that might not be the sole thing we need done at the moment.  If you're working here now.. have you been to our research department?"

Edna's eyes dart around.  "I could show you... we could get someone to cover the front desk for a while."

As always, Flea was not interested in long boring conversations, when she already had her mind made up. She hopped up to her feet and rubbed her tiny hands eagerly. "Right, then! I'm off to go and have a chat with those who make more sense than some of you lot! Anybody want to come with me? I know none of you can talk proper languages, like what I does, but you might be helpful. If someone is doing this, and I find out about it, I am a bit smaller than I should be for fisticuffs, right?"

Oscar stood as well, "I'll go with you. We're not going to get anywhere just sitting here farting around. Just don't go flying off where I can't find you."

[ Players: Alisa                        NPCs: Edna      ]
[    Area: Reception                Location: Library   ]

- "Well, you were strangers when i applied for a job here, and... that was based on a customer recommendation when i worked the register at McDonalds, so... par for the course, i guess?"

Alisa chuckled for a moment, before taking a deep breath.

- "I... haven't been to that department myself yet, actually. I wanted to focus on my own job here first before going out exploring. I did overhear some shards of it, something about trouble, but not the details of it."

Gremian nodded to Flea and Oscar.

"I guess I'll drop at the Bronx with Alisa, ask around. Maybe take a photo of Proge. Foxtrot! I mean, I should probably start using is human name..." He made a face, displeased. He looked around. "Botach, with what you said about nudging fate, I wonder if you will have more luck finding the third Fae by going with Flea than with me looking for clue about what had happened to Pro... Pablo."

Edna leads Alisa to that part of the library that is normally off limits to all those not authorized to be there.. and of course, those authorized to be there are all the Fey characters, and the few Humans who are aware of them and support them.

She knows the danger, here.  Can't pile too much on Alisa at once.  Can't overwhelm... that would be bad.  And that means, before the Faerie Folk do anything rash (as if that ever happens, right?) she has to get them on board.  And she had to do it, quickly, to prevent any unfortunate accidents- here was Alisa in a veritable den full of Fey, and they'd all be able to see her.

They knew the drill.  They'd pick up on her words.

Edna does one of those throat clearings which, while quiet, gets her more immediate attention than a gong would.

"Your attention, everyone.  Perhaps you have already met Alisa, who we were very fortunate to find.  Alisa working for us in reception, now, though we hope to help her discover and develop her full potential.  You know, what is it they say.. find herself.  Maybe the things she will be exposed to here might open her to new... personal insight."

Edna gives a confident "I think I did that well" smile.

Dennis gives a worried look.  "Well it's odd timing.  We're just about getting into today's issues."

"Issues, as in more than one?"

"It's two, which makes me strongly suspect it's three."  Dennis says.

"Oh.  You're ideas about things happening in threes?"

"Indeed," Dennis says.  "Miss Flea and Gremian have some ideas.  But there's more than I first thought."

The wizened old man looks at Alisa.  "Can you excuse us a moment?"  He leads Edna off for a quick whispering session.

If there was one thing that could be guaranteed, it was the capacity of Flea to make a tricky situation worse. Of course, she thought of it as helping, but her idea of help was wildly different to most of her peer group. So it came as little surprise that she rose and stomped along the top of the table to look up at Alisa. Flea, a six inch tall pixie, with wings, and covered in something that probably came out of a sewer. She stuck her hands on her hips and fixed the woman with a piercing eye, and piped up, "Well, it is about time someone told her what was going on! She was going to find out anyway! I told you it was stupid having her work here! At least now I don't have to keep hiding whenever she walks past!"

Alisa gave everyone a friendly wave as she entered the area that she had until now not been allowed to enter. She was paying attention to what was being said, something about threes -- though it might also be 'trees', which would make more sense in context -- but she figured she'd figure that out soon enough as long as she'd keep her ears open.

When Flea spoke up, the Veil changing her from a pixie standing on a table to a petite woman sitting on the edge of one in her eyes, she felt a bit taken aback. Sure, she knew some people could be a little... eccentric, but there were a couple of question marks popping up about the woman's choice of words.

- "Ehh... Why would you need to hide?"

As she spoke to Flea, it was evident the Veil was still affecting her, given that Flea's 'face' that she was looking at was still a ways above Flea herself, even standing on the table with her full height. She then turned to the others, a quick glance asking for support if Flea had a condition she hadn't known about, like xenophobia, that would warrant her needing to hide from her whenever she was near.

Oscar called out to Alisa, "Honey, you need to wake up and smell the garbage. Seriously, we don't have time for you to tippie toe into the shallow end of the pool."

He pointed to the the table where Flea was standing.

"Look right over here. Focus. Keep looking and concentrate. Let your mind go. If you got any drugs or alcohol I suggest taking some right now to make all this a helluva lot easier." He chomped on his unlit cigar and looked around at the others, silently encouraging them to chime in and help wake this girl pronto.

Dennis sighs.  Fey were always like this- they always stumbled when issues multiplied.  They came from a very simple universe, where there was never any real urgency in anything, and so they never seemed to be able to prioritize in the way of Humans.  Most of them, at least.  So they needed help, that way, and Dennis was the one to do it.

"I think," he said in his somewhat hoarse voice, "we cannot lose sight of the original issues for the meeting here, Gremian and his friend.  And we have Gremian, who was going to go up the Bronx with..."

"Alisa expressed a preference not to do that, and perhaps it's a lot to ask of a novice employee," Edna suggested.

"So it is," Dennis agreed.  "Flea, do you think you could help Gremian look into this?  You do have some... interesting... friends who help you out with these things, yes?  That leaves us with the issue of Thale."

The old man turned to Alisa.

"We do a lot of... coming to the assistance of friends, here, especially those in very unusual circumstances.  It's what friends are for, right?"

Alisa took an audible sigh, before focusing back on Flea, honestly wondering what she was supposed to focus on. That aside, if the woman was nervous enough to hide whenever she was near, she honestly failed to understand why focusing on her would somehow make that better. She did find out what Oscar meant however, occasionally catching a hint of Eau de Dumpster coming off Flea, and she could almost see something shimmer about her, but then Dennis spoke up, and she grunted, rubbing her eyes, making a mental note to try and get an early night in. If she was starting to see things, she figured she was more tired than she felt.

- "Actually... i did want to help, but it's just... I need context to properly translate, language can be pretty case sensitive. As my roommate likes to say: Capitalization makes the difference between 'i helped my uncle Jack off a horse' and 'I helped my uncle jack off a horse'."

She looked at the others again.

- "So... Could anyone tell me what this is about? It's fine if i don't get all the details, but i'll need at least a basic idea. I understand wanting to help a friend, that's perfectly fine, but... i don't want to do more harm than good here, y'know?"
This message was last edited by the player at 10:13, Tue 09 June 2020.

Gremian waved back at Alisa when she entered.

Then he smiled as Flea and Oscar tried to get Alisa to pierce the Veil. Smile he hid from Edna and Dennis as best as he could. He didn't wanted them to think that he wouldn't hold his promise to the Library.

"Hum, well, I've got a friend who lost some of his memories. It's hard to explain right now, but we suspect that he might have been hit hard on the head or drugged; I guess that would be a good explanation, right?" he asked Dennis and Edna for their approval with a glance. "And there is another library friend that acted the same, Dennis just told us. And so we suspected that there might be more than just those two. We were about to split in group, to cover more skies. Me in the Bronx, cause my friend live there. Edna initially suggested that you would come with me, then not. Otherwise, we were still picking team."

Alisa gave a quick nod at Gremian. It seemed someone was jumping people in the area, which she suspected was some kind of gang at work, which she supposed was why Edna was a little reluctant to share that information with her.

- "Oh, well that makes sense. Then sure, i could tag along, though i'd have to say that i'm not exactly an expert on drugs, so there may be some translation issues there."

"At the moment we are up to two friends with this issue" Edna says.

"Three.  Such things always come in threes.  Unless it's twelve or seven," Dennis grumbles.

"Well let's be optimistic and hope for just three then," Edna says.  "Although, two that we know of.  And we can't do something for someone if we don't even know who the someone is, can we?  In fact, at the moment we don't even know exactly what happened.  We should... I don't quite know, I've never heard of anything quite like this."

Dennis takes a deep breath.  "So... anyone know where Thale might be?  We can start on both at once, I hope."

Flea shrugged dismissively. "There's nothing that happens in this city that I can't find out about if you give me time. Animals are everywhere, even if you can't see them. Never underestimate the talkative nature of a cockroach, I always say! Well not always. A lot, though! I can send word that bugs are to help Gremian in the Bronx, while I go with Oscar and do some poking in the fishy place, if you like! I mean, I know I am super awesome and everything, but I can't be in both places at once!"

"Can we just do something already?" Oscar groused, piggybacking on Flea's comment. "We're not gonna figure anything out by sitting here on our asses and saying 'three' over and over again. We get it, there's a third crap pile out there waiting for us to step into it. That's life, Dennis. Suck it up buttercup. Stop worrying and start doing."

"I.. I would like to look into Thale, if possible. I don't know him well, but we met a few times. He'd been a help to me, getting me here so, I want to help."

OOC:  From here we really should sort out the next scenes.

So far it's going to be:

Gremian goes to check on Proge?
Flea and Oscar visit the Fishy Place... (What is the fishy place?, where Proge has his boat?)
Felix visits Thale... or Breeze first?

And what would the others like to do in their next scene?

OOC: I'll go along with Gremian then :)

OOC: Proge is a good starting place with Alisa.

Gremian has an advantage here in that he knows Proge, and so, he has options about where to meet him.

The most obvious way is simply to meet Proge at his home- Gremian has been there.  Meeting at the Waste Handling Facility where Proge works (and explores) is a possibility but is more obvious- Gremian is "unauthorized".  Being a Gremlin, he could probably sneak in without difficulty, but this might be tricky for Alisa.

The other question is: They could give Proge a call and arrange it, or just surprise Proge.

Well, i don't know Proge and i don't have any pull with the waste processing plant, so it'll be safe to say i'll let Gremian take the lead on that one :P

I'll call Proge to set a meeting with him, preferably at his favorite bar after his shift, under the pretext that I will be in the vicinity at that time. I'll also mention that I will be with a coworker.

Alisa and Gremian are off to a new thread!  Mott Haven awaits.

Now... do the others feel like doing?

Well, Oscar and I are supposedly off to question the fellow's fishing buddies/actual fish, I believe!