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Late Night Visitors; [Closed]
Topic Started: Feb 18 2014, 07:16 PM (1,107 Views)
The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Etsuko Sadako lay awake in Masumi's bed, eyes shut tight. She wanted to sleep, but she couldn't. She was awake, very awake, stupidly awake, and why? Because she'd gotten so bored with being awake during the day that she'd flopped down in bed, taken a nap, napped for six hours, and then woken up before Masumi had even had a chance to come home and find her asleep. And when asked how her day had been? Eh, not bad, had been the noncommittal answer.

Now the girl lay curled up in a ball underneath the somewhat cheap sheets and blanket on Masumi's bed. As the coverings not entirely enough to keep in all of the body heat she was trying to hoard, or to keep the chill out, she was also dressed in gray sweatpants, a sweatshirt, socks, and thermal underwear to boot. This combination was very comfortable, certainly moreso than her usual sleeping conditions... so why couldn't she fall asleep?

Why, because she'd used all her sleep up. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Oblivious to her ward's growing restlessness, the fortune-teller herself (who alternated with Etsuko each night between bed and futon) slept like a log on the futon next to her. Quiet snoring could be heard, somewhere between ladylike and unladylike. Etsuko knew she was likewise huddled beneath her blankets, too. The sapphire butterfly hairclip had been stowed safely away in a drawer. Etsuko's ring-and-chain, a gift from her sister Nishiyo, was at the bottom of a drawer by the bedside.

She heaved a quiet, annoyed sigh, and opened her eyes under the covers. As her head was completely submerged in blanket, she could see nothing.

One might expect a girl in Etsuko's situation to be angsting about her personal problems. As a matter of fact, she wasn't! Considering she'd been living on the streets, either stealing for food or being fed by Victor (who stole for that food), she was very fortunate indeed. In fact, now that she knew what sorts of things might have happened to her if Victor hadn't come along when he had, she felt extremely fortunate. After Maki Yamada left the other day, Masumi had tentatively asked Etsuko if she had ever encountered certain situations while she was living on the streets. The thought that "sex" could be used to get money hadn't even occurred to Etsuko...

The way Masumi tiptoed up to the topic and then skirted away when she'd received a no for an answer suggested that the fortune-teller saw it as a scary thing. She'd been really relieved when Etsuko said she had never done that. Was it really so bad? Etsuko didn't get it. She didn't get any of this stuff.

Oh, well. The bottom line was, if she hadn't had Victor watching her back for so long she might have had to do that at some point. And if Masumi's trepidation was anything to go by, she should have felt relieved she didn't have to, right? Yes, relieved. Relieved. So, she felt relieved. Or, told herself she should have felt relieved. Mostly she just felt passively puzzled about the whole thing. Living on the street had been pretty horrible, yeah, but it felt like everyone else felt worse about it than she did.

Which was weird, but not unwelcome.

"Agh, shut up, stop thinking, brain..." Etsuko grumbled under her breath, turning over under the sheets. At this point she felt a peculiar feeling like a tingling heat, and it felt weird, but she ignored it--sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. God damn it, why wasn't sleep happening? And the feeling passed. It was an awkward aspect of adolescence that had decided to leave her alone until another day. Fifteen minutes passed after that and nothing happened, and then she turned over for a second time.

Sleep still wasn't happening.

Under the covers and under her breath, Etsuko whispered one of Victor's favorite angry words: "...Shitpickles." Her patience exhausted, she finally began to contemplate getting up. But she didn't want to leave her warm blankets, and she certainly didn't want Masumi waking up and finding her not there, considering the butterfly thing that was supposedly going to whisk her away to a dark underground laboratory to give her magic powers one of these days.

Etsuko vaguely thought that, like, she should have been excited about that. Except she wasn't. It was weird, but Etsuko found herself... really and truly just not giving a shit about magic powers. What was she going to do with magic, anyway? Become the new Featherman Pink? Psh...

---

Masumi Suzuki's house was at the far end of Moonview Street. It was neither a particularly secluded neighborhood nor a terribly visible one. The streetlamps were, apart from a flickery one, in perfect working order, and any other rowhome on this road might have been difficult to break into without being witnessed.

But Masumi's was at the very end; there was an alley running along the side of it, connecting to a marginally easier-to-sneak-through lot and another, worse-off street behind this one. There was a back door in the back, and the lot was devoid of active streetlamps, belonging to a defunct auto-repair shop that had been bought recently but not yet renovated by its new owner.

If Masumi were prioritizing safety over economy, she could have left the back light to her house on to cover this blind spot somewhat. She did not, however, leave the light on--she was hoping to save on her electric bill however she could. As a result, the small, cramped, fenced-in area behind the house was almost completely pitch-black.

Both the front and the back doors were locked, naturally, but opening them when Masumi and Etsuko were both inside was a more complicated job than just breaking the lock on the knob. Both doors were bolt-locked from the inside, both had no less than two additional locks on the interior that would be impossible to see, much less directly break, from outdoors. There were small windows, two in the front, one in the back--above the kitchen counter. As a preventative measure, Masumi had arranged her cheap set of kitchen knives so that all five of them sat in a stand in front of the window, point-up and just out of sight. Only one person could possibly fit through the back window at a time, and if someone were to try breaking in that way, they might possibly land on the knives and seriously injure themselves, unless they shined a flashlight into the room and discovered the hazard-trap before trying to enter.

The "kitchen" and "sitting room" were in fact just one room. Despite having a second floor, this house wasn't much bigger than an apartment. The kitchen area had a counter and a table for cooking space, the sitting room featured a bookshelf decorated with Tarot and fortune-telling paraphernalia, a low, square table surrounded by four tatami mats, and a very cheap couch that looked like much more use would wear it out for good.

There was a narrow staircase leading up from the sitting room, which turned at a ninety degree angle halfway up. There were only three things upstairs: a bedroom, a bathroom, and a very cramped attic room for storage, which also happened to lack insulation entirely; if that door was opened, the blast of cold from inside might just contrast enough with the relatively normal chill the rest of the house played host to that the one who opened the door would feel it like a slap in the face.
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Czernobog
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Etsuko -- and anyone else awake at this hour of night, honestly -- would hear the sound of a motor vehicle of some variety moving slowly down the street. It didn't stop, but made the next right turn, and then seemed to proceed off. Looking out the front window, a windowless van would be visible, the driver and any other occupants cloaked in shadow.

Behind the house, a group of three individuals were at work near the locked door. One held a flashlight, another was working upon the electrical meter with a pair of lockpicks, trying to get it open. A third stood watch, crouched by the fence with a crowbar across his knees. Each was dressed in their uniform: boots, jeans, black t-shirt, gloves, black hooded sweat shirt, bandannas across their mouth and nose.

There were supposed to be three more, the watcher reflected. A getaway driver and two others. This had to be handled more delicately than previous operations, but it was too cherry to not hit: the woman who lived here was a vulnerable target. The construction of her home made it difficult to strike with overwhelming force: molotov cocktails or petrol bombs would burn the houses to either side.

"Got it," the picklock breathed. He took the flashlight, and the sentry and the former flashlight-holder changed positions. The sentry went down on one knee, and began to work. This was a delicate, dangerous operation. The tools he was using weren't ideal, but he didn't have to keep track of them once the fight began. He'd never touched them with his own hands, and his accomplices had stolen them all.

They weren't going in until the second team arrived -- one of their number was bringing a wireless phone jammer, and they didn't want this to turn out like those other ones had. Thankfully, it shouldn't interfere with the radio signal, and the leader was remaining silent until he got the signal -- long-short-long-short -- from both teams.

In, do the deed, and out.

"Friendlies incoming." The sentry didn't get up. Two men and a woman, wearing the uniform, came out of the dark. The woman had a tire iron, one of the men had a crowbar, and the other had a knife. Guns were out for this op. Too loud.

One of the men produced the device -- illegal to operate, legal to own, paradoxically -- that would render all cell phone signals within a certain radius dead, and clicked it on. He nodded to the electrician.

The electrician cut the power. They were all asleep. No one should notice.

"Going around to the window," the woman said, and held the tire iron out to the man with the crowbar. She took it, and pulled a small flash light out of her pocket, checking the window. "Shit...she's got a trap here. Knives."

"So be careful," the man who now held the tire iron said.

The woman nodded, and put the flashlight back in her pocket, taking out a roll of duct tape, and began to cover the window. She knew how to do this in theory, but had never done it in practice: it should keep the glass from being anywhere near as loud as it would normally be when she broke it. After all, in a neighborhood like this, would anyone really notice the muffled sound of glass being broken in the distance?
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Etsuko heard the sound of a car or something outside and groaned, turning over in bed and pulling her pillow over the sides of her head. Some stupid idiot driving down this street at this time of night. And she'd just been feeling like she might be able to get some sleep, too. After a few seconds, she groaned, and rolled off the bed, pulling the whole damn blanket with her. She had to go to the bathroom, and she was getting hungry. Masumi wouldn't be mad if she nipped downstairs and grabbed one of the leftover onigiri, would she? Etsuko quietly reached out from under the covers, slid the bedside table's drawer open, and pulled out the chain on which her ring held. One-handed, she pulled it over her neck and let it fall onto her chest, where it bounced and glittered faintly in the light through the crack in the blinds before vanishing under the covers.

The young girl, who at this point might as well have been a mass of moving blankets, dragged her coverings along the floor with her, toward the bedroom door, opening it slowly, slipping out into the hall and making her way toward the bathroom.

Now, she might have unwittingly alerted the people outside to her presence, but Etsuko had developed a certain habit while working with Victor. When trying to steal from someone's house, it was important to be quiet, and to be quiet when opening and closing doors...

The bathroom door opened almost silently, and when she was inside, closed just as almost-silently. It would be impossible to hear from outside.

Back in the bedroom, Masumi Suzuki snoozed on.
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Czernobog
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"Power's down. Click it," the electrician said, sticking the insulated screwdriver he had been using into his belt. All of the lights in the house would go dark, the digital clocks would follow suit, everything that relied on electricity. Combined with the cell jammer, the house was a communicative dark zone.

The two team leaders clicked their radios in the agreed-upon manner, and the young woman swung the crowbar, bashing the taped glass in. This left a fairly large hole, with a mass of tape and broken glass hanging in. She handed her crowbar to the man who had been standing next to her and then climbed through, gingerly trying to avoid the knives pointed toward the window.

She moved slowly: someone coming downstairs might catch her, and she was unarmed.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
In the bathroom upstairs, Etsuko clicked on the light. She looked at herself in the mirror and her reflection looked back at her with an irate scowl, as if chiding her from the world of mirror-space for sleeping all her hours away while the sun was up. Etsuko sighed, and let the blanket drop from around her shoulders, fumbling with the waist of her sweatpants with one hand while she lifted the toilet lid with the other.

She was just at the point of lifting the lid when the lights suddenly clicked off, she yelped, and the toilet lid closed with a snap. A power outage? Now?! Oh, of all the--

There was a sound from downstairs, like a cracking and crumbling. Etsuko whipped around, and stumbled on the discarded blanket, snapping her hands over her mouth to stifle what would have been a yell. Was that breaking glass? No, it was too quiet for breaking glass... wasn't it?

Hitching her pants back up, Etsuko quickly bent to the floor, bundling up the blanket in her arms, and then crept to the door. Quietly, she opened it, and stepped outside. Was someone downstairs? Etsuko couldn't hear anything, but--

She recalled something Victor had done once. In Yasoinaba, before they'd--before she'd made the mistake of leaving. He'd used tape and a pipe. He had made breaking in... quieter. Burglars? What kind of burglar would rob a little house like this, though? ...Etsuko's mind immediately jumped to Masumi's hairclip and Nishiyo's ring. Those were the only two items in the house she could think of that were worth selling.

The girl crept to the wall beside the staircase, and bent down, staying out of sight in the dark. She focused on her ears. There was nothing downstairs worth stealing except Tarot card junk--Etsuko had checked, simply because there had been nothing else to do in the hours alone while Masumi was at work and no one was available to keep Etsuko company. If someone looked for something, she would eventually hear some sort of rummaging or opening of drawers or something. If someone came up the stairs, she would hear the third step on the first flight creak.

If someone came up the stairs far enough to turn the ninety-degree corner on the way up, she would definitely hear the first step creak.

And if they reached the fifth step on the second part of the staircase, she had a ball of heavy blankets to throw over that person's face and the full weight of a teenage girl's body to slam-tackle them right on down the stairs with. That plus a good yell would doubtless wake Masumi up. Masumi would have time to get her gun and call for help.

And if she didn't hear anything then she was just imagining it all, and this was a power outage. And she would get back to bed, she supposed... there wasn't any heating food up if she couldn't fricking turn the microwave on.
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Czernobog
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The woman at the window paused, holding her breath to listen for a count of thirty. The other team was attempting to pick the lock on the door by flashlight, but it didn't seem to be going terribly quickly.

She pulled the glass free as easily as she could, reached in, and unlatched the window. Now for the not getting cut part. She reached through and removed each knife from the stand, placing it off to the side. The angle meant she had to work by touch, because she wasn't going to place her head above anything upright and sharp when there were magic people running around. Monsters who could burn you and rot you and put you to sleep? So many ways that adding free-standing blades to the equation wasn't a good idea.

The other team got the door unlocked, and discovered the other locks.

Okay, that was the first step.

She slithered through the window, and gently lowered herself to the ground. As an afterthought, she reached back through and took the tire iron back. Having some kind of bludgeon on hand was essential.

The woman unlocked the back door, and then focused her attention on the stairs. Their target was up there. Their target's weaknesses were earth and electricity. Unlike one or two of the others, she hadn't had a taser to bring. Would salt affect the earth weakness? Rock salt had worked, would just regular salt do? It was a mineral, right?

...best to just focus on bludgeoning, she decided.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Ooooh, she could hear things down there. It was faint but she could definitely hear things. Whoever it was was being very quiet. There was a faint clicking coming from somewhere. Etsuko couldn't tell if it was the front or the back but it was probably one of the doors. Someone had broken in through the window, but the only locks that could be picked were on the outside. That probably meant there was more than one person, the one on the inside would unbolt the locks...

Etsuko knew that meant she had time to creep back to the bedroom and wake up Masumi, but if she made any noise by accident--

The girl slowly swallowed a dry lump, and made sure to breath slowly, quietly. She leaned in a bit further, and chanced a quick peek around the corner, but withdrew her head just as quickly. Because of the corner midway up the stairs, it was impossible to see what or who was down there from up here, and it was equally impossible for whoever was downstairs to see what was up here.

She hoped whoever was down there would see the lack of valuables and just leave.
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Czernobog
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The door unlocked, the others came in. They gathered at the foot of the stairs, and considered. The turn in the stairs made a shooting gallery -- and while it would be stupid to assume that they were necessarily detected or that the enemy had guns, their quarry did have the ability to strike at a distance.

With six people breathing -- even trying to breathe quietly -- in the small space of the combined kitchen/sitting room, it was impossible for any of them to hear the quiet movement at the top of the stairs.

One group -- the woman with the tire iron, the man with the crowbar (who was the one with the radio,) and the man with the knife -- headed for the stairs. The other three took up positions where they could observe the stairs but quickly get under cover, quietly clearing off the table, and gently lifting it so that it rested on its side or pressing against the wall.

The man with the knife took the lead. Their quarry would be bottled in up there, but if observation had taught them anything, it was that you couldn't expect these freaks to move like normal people.

The knifeman stepped on one of the creaking steps, and then paused.

"Fuck," he said, louder than he had intended to.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
The third step on the first flight. God, they actually were coming upstairs. She didn't know how many there were, but they were coming. Etsuko silently looked back toward the bedroom. If she tried to wake Masumi now, they would rush upstairs and silence her. She couldn't move, and if she called out an alert now, Masumi, being groggy with sleep, wouldn't be able to react quickly enough to do anything. Her only chance was to attack as they neared the top... the first and fifth steps after the turn would creak, and there was no visible way to see which ones were loud and which ones were silent. Even if they didn't, there was no way she wouldn't at least hear footsteps as they neared the top.

Etsuko clutched the bundle of blanket and sheet in her arm and slowly set her legs firmly beneath her, making herself a coiled spring, ready to pounce. In all likelihood, this would hurt her as much as them, unless she managed to successfully turn whoever she jumped on into a landing pad, which was... probably less possible in reality than it seemed in her head. Either way, it would make a lot of noise, and it would prevent her them from rushing down the stairs, so...

The girl had to suppress an urge to gulp, and in fact, suppressed the urge to breath as well.

If they'd broken the window, they had at least one bludgeoning weapon.

She wouldn't last more than a little bit. The only hope was for Masumi to react quickly, get her gun, do something before they did something to Etsuko.

The short-haired teen hidden at the top of the stairs felt like her heart might shatter her ribs at this rate. Instead of fear, she tried to focus on righteous anger, and how very satisfying it would be if she managed to make a staircase dogpile out of this. She was only partly successful at distracting herself with this thought. But one of them sounded like a man, and was probably way physically stronger than she was. She would definitely need to tangle them up in the blanket to take them down, a flat-out wrestling takedown wouldn't work...
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Czernobog
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The three assassins waited, and after a moment the lead hood looked back down. The second man nodded, and the woman nodded after a brief pause. The message was clear: Go on.

He proceeded up, rounding the corner. He held his knife up, preparing to strike as soon as someone came down.

Clearly this was the best course of action.

The other Black Hoods continued as they were: three silently waiting in the sitting room, three heading upstairs. This was their first intrusion, and they were somewhat out of their depth. Ambush tactics were easy; breaking and entering seemed too easy.
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