"You tell me lots of things," Pesky said, walking toward the garage to get his bike.  "Which one are you talking about?"

"Ughhhhh!" Corey said annoyed. "You never remember anything I say." he complained.

"The thing that Edith and Gary are doing. Remember? They're looking into those disappearing kids."

The missing kids.

Pesky had heard something about that. More than something. It was a little project that Edith had been working on with Gary. Trying to find out what happened to the kids on the other side of the neighborhood. The kids from Main Street. A bunch had gone missing over the last year. And even more recently, a kid named 'Bobby' had been found dead in his house. Or that's what the kids on Rodeo Drive where Pesky lived had been saying.

It had all seemed like rumors when Pesky first moved in, but turned out to be all too true.

He often thought of the kids over on Main, sometimes wondering what his parents would do if he disappeared all of a sudden.  His new friends Edith and Gary had been quietly working the case for quite a while. But once the cops found that Bobby kid, they'd started to recruit more kids to help with the investigation.

Pesky grabbed his black bike out of the garage and pulled up next to Corey.  "So what's going on with that?," he asked, then felt a sense of panic.  "They didn't, like, take another kid did they?"

Corey shook his head.



"Edith's got a new plan. She's planning on picking two kids to actually go over to main street and talk to some of the kids that are there." Corey said.

Pesky knew he wasn't supposed to go over to Main Street. Mom told him that under no circumstances was he allowed to go over there. It was just on the other side of the neighborhood, but Pesky wasn't allowed. In fact, Mom had been worried enough about letting him outside since kids had started to go missing. But Dad had intervened on Pesky's behalf in the end.

Pesky felt a mixture of unease, panic, and excitement with Corey's words.  His mom would kill him if he went over to Main Street, but Edith was only picking two kids.  He wouldn't probably wouldn't even be chosen, but he desperately wanted to hear Edith's new plan.

"Well, let's go see Edith.  I wanna hear this plan."

Then he added at the last second, as he always did, "Race ya!," and tore out of the driveway toward Edith's.

Corey shook his head.



"Urgghhhhhh!" Corey complained "You're always racing and racing!" he said.

Still he ran after Pesky.

OOC:

Pesky rolls Stamina + Athletics vs. Corey's Roll of Stamina + Athletics

(paste your roll into the thread below)

17:18, Today: Peter 'Pesky' Eskind rolled 2 successes using 4d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s.  Race between Pesky and Corey.

//edited to change font color
This message was last edited by the player at 22:19, Sat 21 Sept 2019.

19:41, Today: Corey failed (no successes) using 1d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s ((7)).

Pesky ran faster and much quicker than Corey could keep up. He darted the familiar route down Rodeo drive, passing Jimmy's house and then onward past Wallace's house.

Pesky knew that Wallace hadn't been outside pretty much all summer. The kid was having some kind of break down. He was the only one on Rodeo drive that had been to the Circus last year when it came into town. Now, hardly anyone saw him outside. And not just now during the month of October, but all summer.




Corey pulled up next to Pesky, panting before bending over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

"I...**cough**..can't stand it when you...*cough*..do that." Corey complained. The two boys were just feet away now from the tree house.

"Sorry, can't help it," Pesky lied with a smile.

He walked toward the tree house without waiting for Corey, saying, "C'mon, let's check out the new plan."

Pesky approached the tree.

The tree hunkered low to the windswept hill as if it wanted nothing more than to be sheltered by the tall grasses that waved golden in the late autumn wind. Its branches fanned out wide, separating from each other like the petals of a blossom.

There were pegs of wood that made a ladder, each one nailed to the trunk leading up to the square structure that formed the tree house way above.

"What's the password?" A voice said as Pesky stood below. It was clearly Gary's voice.

OOC: Pesky rolls Wits + Composure

0 Success - Pesky doesn't remember the password.

1+ Success - Pesky remembers the password.

"Come on! Just let us up. You know who we are." Corey complained.

"Password!" Gary insisted.

09:51, Today: Peter 'Pesky' Eskind rolled 1 success using 5d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s.

Pesky remembered the password. It was Thundercats, based on the show that he and Gary had watched lately.

"Scooby Doo!" Corey yelled.

"Nope." Gary said from up above, insistent that the right word be spoken, even though he probably knew it was just Corey and Pesky

Pesky rolled his eyes at Corey and whispered, "Scooby Doo?  Seriously?"

Then he turned his head toward the tree house opening, said very confidently, "Thundercats," and waited for permission to enter.

"Come up!" Gary yelled. Then moments later his face appeared peering over the edge to look down.




"Pesky!"

"Corey! Come up!"

Closest to the ladder, Pesky started up first.  Beginning, as always, on his left foot, he climbed the makeshift ladder.  Once he entered the treehouse, he scooted to the side to allow Corey space to enter.  Only then did he begin to look around.

The place had changed quite a bit since the last time he'd been here.  Everything just seemed more...serious.  What had been kind of a fun, spare-time activity had turned into what looked like a full blown investigation.  They even had a map on the wall.

Suddenly a little more solemn, Pesky asked, "So, like...what's going on?"

In front of the map, and unavoidably greeting Pesky, was Edith's enormous head. She looked up from a folder that was labeled "case file" to take in Pesky.



"We've got a lead on two kids in the neighborhood who might know what happened to the missing kids." Edith said.

"Yeah." Gary said, with good-natured cheer and little less serious than Edith. "We've put some clues together. Just like Go-Go Gadget. I mean, inspector gadget."

Corey climbed up behind Pesky, still breathing heavy from the run.




"Hey 'Gar'. Hey Edith." He managed to greet Gary and Edith. Looking over at the wall and the small pulley system that lowered the bucket out the window, he winced.

"Aw...man. It's broken again!" Corey pulled on the old rope and the hinges of the pulley creaked with a groaning sound. "It broke again." He repeated, disappointed.

Pesky responded to Edith immediately, his interest piqued as he saw how serious she was.

"Holy crap!," he said, and moved to sit on the floor, Indian-style, closer to Edith and the map.  He peppered her with questions.

"Which two kids?"
"What do they know?"
"Corey said something about sending a couple of our kids over to Main St..."

He tried to ignore Corey's fiddling with the stupid bucket pulley, but it was too much of a distraction.  "I'll fix it later!," he said and focused intently on Edith, glancing only momentarily at Gary.

Edith was clearly the one in-the-know.

Edith reared her enormous head up from the shoddy case file folder and turned it away from the map.




"They aren’t very nice kids." Edith said, slightly annoyed by Pesky’s avalanche of questions. “I was reading the newspapers, because I’m very smart. It happens like that if you read a lot. One of the things I’ve discovered is that the Police interviewed two kids that lived on Main Street. Logically, since they didn’t cooperate, they aren’t very nice. But it could also mean that their parents didn’t allow them to speak to the police, that’s what the paper says. Since there aren’t many kids left on Main Street, we are going to need to send two kids over there from our group to find those two and see what they know.”