Those Who Speak of Dreams [P, W/ Ben]

Mission:

Once more, Baliquis had snuck out of the temple and wandered the streets aimlessly. Her nights had been perplexed with nightmares. Sleep did not come easy to her lately, but it would be another week or two before that began to show on her face. Likely in the form of unfamiliar purple crescents under her eyes. She was unprepared for that, and her family history with such things had never given much leeway for things like that. If their mother’s physique and skin were to be the example and living model of how they would be as they age, then she and her sister had undeniable proof they would do so very well.

She smiled as she made her way to the mission board to see if there was anything she could do, and she picked up one in regard to a town thief. Perhaps she could get her sister involved since telling her verbally would be easier. Maybe that's another way they could bond- by pursuing this shinobi life together. As long as Bali told her which ones to look for, maybe taught her the letters for the mission ranks- it would be easier for Yuki to participate and advance through the ranks.

Either way, this mission included another person. Hence, she waited in the streets near the most recent break-in location of a rogue holiday thief, to meet the other person.

[ WC : 233 ]

This was a strange land but...

Ben needed that. Distance, time to think. He had witnessed an atrocity. Death. Destruction. Pain. Torture. He had seen it all, and...

And he wanted to never see it again.

That might mean needing to take things into his own hands, in the long run. But this, right now? Right here?

He could escape those thoughts. This was a different land, different weather, different everything, really. A place to take his mind away from the horrors, the tragedies.

Even if just for a short while before he went back to face the darkness and pain.

And yet, even here, even surrounded by so much new, and different, he found himself falling on old habits.

Even with his word ripped asunder, destroyed from under his feet, he was taking odd jobs.

They were less... questionable now. More reasonable. Not hunting down people for payment, or clearing tenants out of a building they could not pay rent for.

In this case, he was to be capturing a robber in the area who was stealing... trees and presents and other holiday memorabilia.

Presents? Those made sense, those had a chance of being expensive. But trees? Who did that? Why did they do that? What?

AND HOW DID THEY DO THAT?

This person had not only escaped capture, but had, as of yet, completely escaped being seen!

Who had not escaped being seen, however, was on Baliquis. While Ben did not yet know her name, he did recognize the location. He had been directed there as "the most recent location disturbed by the thief", so he walked up to the lady.

"Hello," he said, raising his tattooed arm for a hand shake, though the coat hid any sign of the tattoos. "My name is Benjamin Lott. Am I right to assume you are the other individual tasked with seeking down the 'holiday thief'?"

---

WC 315

She hadn’t been waiting long for the other person to arrive, but she had also been lost in thought. Time seemed to be distorted for her lately, and she felt a bit light-headed or maybe disoriented- she didn’t know, and she had difficulty disconcerting which was which. Every day that passed only seemed to make her more aware of how unaware she was becoming of her surroundings. What was happening?

“Hello.” A male voice arose but she could tell it was being directed at her and she looked over to see a man who raised his arm for a handshake while he wore a high-collared, off-grey jacket and offered a hand to her. “My name is Benjamin Lott. Am I right to assume you are the other individual tasked with seeking down the 'holiday thief'?” She smiled and nodded politely as she clasped a hand to his and smiled her practiced, poised and perfect.

“Hello; I am Nozomi Hozuki, but you may call me Baliquis.” She said, “Yes, I look forward to working with you.” She advised and gestured to the home behind her,

“Shall we go in and look around then?” Bali offered, and with that, she stepped backward and turned towards the modest home, the door unlocked, and she turned the knob and then opened the door. “It’s my first time looking in, but hopefully they left some traces we can follow-”

The home was ‘empty.’ It had the generic furniture, but where there were imprints of a tree stand in the carpet, it was gone. There had been stocking hangers on a partially cleaned mantle, but their stockings were gone. There had probably been ornaments, but the only ones that remained were shattered and crushed into the carpet.

“Would it be wise to try and get a footprint off of anything we could?” Bali asked Ben.

[ WC: 309 ]

Ben frankly had no idea how to do an investigation. There was a not insignifant part of himself that had hoped the robbers would somehow still be here, or had returned for some strange reason.

"Yes, that seems like a good idea," he replied when asked about the footprints, despite having no idea if that was reasonable or even possible.

This was, of course, after he had followed 'Baliquis' into the building.

And he caught himself mid thought.

He was literally using a pseudonym. His WHOLE LIFE these days was this adopted name. And...

And he had frankly forgotten that.

He had abandoned his old name long ago. Not out of hatred, or fear, but...

Maybe it was out of fear.

But who was he, who had abandoned his name so fully that people had died for him not knowing his true name, to judge someone for freely speaking two names?

At the same time... Something bugged him about this house. It was bare.

Yes, it was supposed to have been stolen from, but...

The couch looked too new.

The dust simultaneously made it look too old.

Ben could SEE where a Christmas tree once left an indent in the carpet but...

Carpets don't normally have shape memory like this.

This was supposed to be an old crime.

At least a few hours.

But Ben could clearly see the shape that the tree stand had once made in the carpet. Yet no obvious signs of footprints.

BANG

Ben turned to see the front door behind him shut when he had left it open walking in.

Was the weather playing tricks on him? Making his already perhaps too high paranoia act out?

Or was there something more going on?

---

WC 288
TWC 593

Baliquis struggled to figure out how to operate normally and what she should or should not be doing in a situation like this. How does one conduct an investigation? She had no personal experience, as her only experience was- ordering it to be done. Ordering some other peon beneath her to go ahead and initiate one. Or to conduct one, for that matter. Nor had she ever lived in her own home and could tell the difference between ‘new’ and ‘used’ as all things to her were in some form, used but kept in excellent condition. “Yes, that seems like a good idea.” The other man said, and she smiled inwardly; however, that wasn’t what grabbed her attention- It was a bang behind her, and she whipped around to see what had happened.

It seemed the door had slammed shut, but- Bali had left it open behind her for her companion on this mission. She moved to the door, walked past Ben, opened the home door, stepped out of the home and into the street, looked around, and saw it.

An image of pure bewildered ridiculousness.

It was a green, furry thing with a pear-shaped body and- a massive pot belly. It didn’t wear shoes.  It wore a white-fur-trimmed, red velvet suit jacket that barely covered its pot belly with a batching, red-velvet stocking hat trimmed with white fur and tipped with a furred ball. It had a massive bag over its shoulder, and from it? Somehow, a bit of a Christmas tree top and its gold tinsel star poked out from the bad that could be no more than maybe 5 feet long. Was it some type of… jutsu? On the bag to allow it to hold such a thing? That didn’t even matter because it was more or less Bali’s reaction to the fucking thing-

“W-WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?” Baliquis yelled in surprise as her poised mask slipped, and the thing turned around as it made its way down the street- and had a half smirk on its weird, snub-nosed, and cat-like face where two yellow eyes were seated. “Thief!” She snapped at it, and it flinched, pupils, dilating from her yelling at it before it whipped around and started running down the street, “Stop right there!” Baliquis said it was gaining too much ground, so she stepped out of one of her shoes, picked it up, and chucked it at the creature. Despite her lack of experience, perhaps her anger made up for what she was lacking because her shoe sailed through the air and nailed the creature in the back of the head and it yelled. It yelled out in surprise and pain like an actual person as it struggled and she was shocked.

“That hurt!” It snapped at Bali as it snatched up her shoe, then tossed it back at her before it began running off; as she caught it, and she hoped Ben would join her in chasing the weird, abominable fucker down.

Spoiler:

[ WC: 500 ][ TWC: 1,042 ]
@Benjamin Lott

The slamming of the door seemed to have worried Baliquis. To be fair, it worked Benjamin as well. As she walked past and opened the door, Ben turned to follow.

What he witnessed shocked Balquis.

And himself.

The following attempt by the other to throw a shoe at the fleeing strange creature left him... perplexed. Would this individual have... battle ready shoes? Was that a thing? Did people make those?

Benjamin did not have much experience in that side of things, seeing as he was a civilian until very recently.

Rather, however, he started giving chase, dodging the throw back attempt by the creature of the shoe. Luckily, it had had to stop to grab and throw the shoe, so he had a chance to catch up. Unluckily, it was throwing things out of the bag to hamper his ability to follow. That, combined with the snowy conditions that did a good job of hiding ice, made it quite difficult for him to properly chase the strange stranger.

This was made worse by some of the things being thrown at him.

One was a giant box, carefully wrapped.

It was taller than himself.

The sound it made left him thinking of a large metal box, perhaps with padding between layers and... something that kept the snowball that hit it on the front sounding like it hit metal. Ben was not entirely sure what that hit sounded like, to be frank.

But the key was, there was no way it should have fit into that bag, especially with all the shit that could be seen inside the bag BESIDES what was being thrown out. There was definitely something going on with that bag, and Ben wanted to know. He had... ideas based on that. If he could figure out how it worked, he could answer a potentially big question that he had...

An idea...

But that was a matter for later, after catching this fucker.

He was slowly making up ground, even with the harassment of a variety of wrapped goodies.

He was, however, caught off guard as an entire tree was thrown from the bag to get in his way.

And even after throwing the tree, there was still another tree poking out the top of the bag.

What was that thing?

Frankly, Ben might have lost the green fucker, as the variety of holiday things thrown out grew and became more cumbersome to get around.

Until a small girl with a hat inscribed with "Cindy" crossed the pathway, not seeing the fleeing green thing.

Rather than blow through the girl, the thing tried to JUMP!

And, well. The jump succeeded.

The landing? Not so much.

It was, however, a 10/10 perfect split.

Ben caught up shortly after, with the green creature still stunned, sitting on the ground. He was able to easily take the bag, and tied up the beings hands.

Now would be a matter of waiting.

---

WC 490
TWC 1093 (corrected for previous math issue)

Baliquis was lucky to be blessed with a partner like Benjamin for a mission like this because, after all, who could have expected, they would run into some furry creature doing home burglaries? Not only that, it was almost as if there was perhaps a synergy. It wasn’t something about Ben’s overall appearance but rather his demeanor and how he reacted. Or maybe it was just how he reacted in this situation that made her feel this way?

How she came out and tried to attack the creature, and it slowed enough for Ben to come out of the house and give chase but therein lay another problem- Bali wasn’t much of a runner, and Ben was running. She felt a sudden urge to ‘think fast,’ and her first response was? She knelt down and set her shoe on the ground, then stood up and stepped back into it- pausing momentarily to make sure it was on- before she went after him.

It was almost comical to see how, as Ben gave chase, the creature posses out looted presents at him, and the bewilderment she felt at first glance of it’s strange tote bag only remained. A massive gift box, well wrapped but taller than Ben, came out of the sack as well, and how well he was managing the snow-slushed landscape as she followed. Unlike Ben, Bali made sure to focus on stamina rather than speed and to take her time following while trying to keep them in sight, and she even had to dodge some of the presents herself- then it happened.

Until a small girl with a hat inscribed with "Cindy" crossed the pathway, not seeing the fleeing green thing. More peculiar was that the creature didn’t stop but attempted to jump over her, and it was- successful- until it slipped it’s snow on the slush as it landed and yowled as it blatantly fucked up its whole landed and fell into a split. While the creature was disoriented and stunned, Ben caught up to it, snacked its hellish back of wonder from its grasp, and then tied up its hands.

Bali caught up not long after and smiled, “Thank you so much for catching him, Ben- now- Why don’t we take a breather.” She said as she walked around the two and looked at the creature square in its cat-face, “Won’t you consider giving up stealing after…missing your landing?”

[ WC: 403 ] [ TWC: 1,445 ]

Mid Thread Claims:

Approved

Baliquis wrote:

Baliquis smiled spitefully as she grabbed the creature, hauled it up to its feet by its arm against its vocal protests, and walked the creature into the local authorities building of this land so it could be locked up for its crimes. She looked back to see if Ben had followed her to the building- but he wasn’t behind her. A spark of hope that had been in her chest suddenly snuffed when the area behind her was seen to be empty. It would have been nice to strengthen their acquaintanceship, but that was now a lost cause. When she was given verbal confirmation that the creature was booked and another person took it away by the arm to lock it up, Baliquis nodded and left the building. Once she exited the building, she continued and made her way home.

---

Post Word Count

140

Total Word Count

1,585

Tech WC Claims

+ 1,140 WC  / 2,064 WC
towards Water Dragon Bullet ( 1754 / 2064 )

Non-Tech WC Claims

+ 30 AP /  WC to AP

OOC:

Permission given OOC by Player ( Zee ) to leave.

Hey, so, unfortunately, I can't approve this because you're making both an AP claim, and a 25% discount claim in the same post. Edit in which one you will be choosing and then I can approve this.