Inside 73: Holiday Rush

[bc56]

Friendly Meeting
"Achoo! Just a mocha for me." Unbeknownst to anyone, a small cloud of sneeze particles are spreading out from Jade, but it's hardly relevant. After all any contagion from a normal cold would take a couple days to take hold. Definitely not an amount of time on the order of ten minutes.
Up at the front of the restaurant, the hostess sneezes and scratches at her itchy scalp. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. Pay no attention to the fact that her hair, which was previously blonde, is taking on a reddish sheen, or the way her ears are a bit higher up on her head than before, or the slight bulge forming on her backside.

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

"A tes souhaits. And mademoiselle may wish to consider the merits of a handkerchief." The waiter mumbles, flicking out such an item, setting it gently in front of Jade's spot on the table, before returning his attention to his notepad. "One mocha and one cocoa with ...sides. It is not a great day to be a cocoa bean, oui?" The waiter gives a forced, haughty laugh at his own joke and leaves for the kitchen.

"...I like him." Siana says with an affirmative little nod, as though just now deciding to form an opinion on the service here. "These people certainly seem to... um..." She cranes her neck to see the hostess's rapid transformation, not entirely sure what to make of what she's seeing. "Is it a full moon tonight or something?" She asks, before seizing up suddenly. Oh Absum no, please don't let it be a...

A...

No, she feels all right. It's probably not that.

[bc56]

Friendly Meeting
"I don't know, but it's not late enough at night for that to happen. Something's n-aachoo! Not right." At that moment, Jade's phone rings in her purse. "I'd better get this." She answers the phone and her face falls lower and lower as the very one-sided discussion continues.
"What happened?"
"How is that possible?"
"I'm in a cafe right now, a cafe pretentiuex or something."
"Everyone here is fine, except the hostess looks like she's trying to hold back a certain moon-related affliction."
Speaking of her, her ears are even higher up on her head now and that bulge is getting bigger and puffier, straining her clothes. Her hair is as bright red as Jade's too.
"Oh ****."
Jade hangs up. "Quick, we need to... achoo!.. get the door and keep anyone from... achoo!.. leaving!" She's up and out of her seat in a flash.

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

Siana's out of her seat quickly, too, but since her current top speed is "hobble", Jade will probably reach the door well before she does. This leaves the poor strigoi staring at her confusedly, at least until the hostess has reached a point in her transformation that more strongly resembles Jade.

"What's going... on..." Siana stops by the door, physically barring anyone from going in or out. "...Oh. That's... that's unfortunate." She gives the hostess a sad little smile. "I mean... it's not that bad, right? The foxy look kinda works for you."

Wait, didn't Jade say she had hunger problems when she first transformed?

Siana's smile drops in an instant. "Oh poop."

[bc56]

Friendly Meeting
The hostess looks increasingly panicked as the strange bulge finally finds its way out of her clothes and reveals itself as a cluster of nine fluffy tails, growing steadily larger by the second. Jade looks very frightened too. "Sorry! I... Achoo! Don't know what happened but I'm apparently contagious. Everyone stay calm! We'll find a way to cure this. In the meantime, nobody leave until then. We don't want this getting out of control."
Luckily, at least for now, the newly transformed hostess is not trying to eat anyone. She mostly seems surprised, confused, and frightened by what's going on.

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

Siana leans up next to Jade and whispers. "Not to make a liar out of you, but... do you have any idea how to treat something like this? I don't. We'll need to call someone for help, and to get the word out..." She pulls up her phone and starts scrolling through contacts. "I know a few people at MERC who can help... maybe Miss Ty-Amer? This looks like magic to me."

[bc56]

Friendly Meeting
"No, but it's caused by my magic, right? My magic just be the solution." The problem is that Jade doesn't understand her magic at all, let alone what went wrong to start turning the people around her into foxes. Others besides the hostess are starting to show signs of change. Siana had better hope her immunity to nonmagical disease will protect her against the magical fox pox... Although it doesn't seem all that bad, honestly.

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

Fortunately for Siana, she's protected on three fronts from such an illness. Mundane bacteria simply can't survive contact with her metabolism; she instead assimilates them harmlessly. On a metaphysical level, she does the same thing to spiritual entities, devouring them without care as to their origins or intentions, totally involuntarily, which was key in the incident that gave her her horns. And finally, in case neither of those were enough, after a rash of transformations in her family, her god has seen fit to bless/curse her with a sort of divine edit lock; even if she can catch whatever disease Jade's giving off, she'd still be immune to the transformative symptoms specifically. She'll be fine.

"We should still call someone." Siana points out. "This is kind of a big deal. People need to know that there's been an outbreak of... of something." She hasn't quite thought of "fox pox" as a name yet. "And maybe we should split these people up, too? We don't want everyone in the building getting sick..."

[bc56]

Friendly Meeting
"Sure. I have no clue who to call when there's a magical something turning people into nine-tailed foxes, so you should handle that. I'll try to keep this from spreading." Jade stays back from everyone and tries to keep the groups apart without getting close enough to sneeze on them. It's not exactly easy going.

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

While Jade busies herself with herding foxes, Siana pulls up Astrana's contact information, but hesitates in actually pressing the call button. When they'd last left off, things were in a bit of an... awkward position. Turning into a giant demon and trying to eat the warlock was just a little bit of a social faux pas, among other things.

Hopefully, Astrana doesn't have caller ID.

beep

[Shadowcaller]

[Friendly Meeting]

"This is Astrana Tyramera of MERC talking, how may I assist you?" Siana can hear the warlocks voice on the other line.

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

Siana takes a deep breath before she begins.
"HiImatCafePretentieuxandwe'vegotanoutbreakofadise asethatturnspeopleintofoxescanyoupleasecomehelp?" She rambles, wanting to get as much relevant information out as possible before Astrana realizes who she's talking to or has a chance to hang up.

[Shadowcaller]

[Friendly Meeting]

"I'm sorry miss, can you repeat that please? You were talking too fast." Astrana replies, unfazed by what sounded like a panicked teenager.

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

Siana nods, forgetting for a moment that Astrana can't see the gesture, and repeats herself, at a more comprehensible speed and with more details. "Sorry. I'm at Cafe Pretentieux, in Inside. There's been an outbreak of a disease here... something that turns people into these sort of fox-person hybrids. Apparently spreads through sneezes. My friend and I have the building closed off, but we're going to need help getting these people back to normal. Naturally, I thought of you." Siana clears her throat awkwardly. "Can you help us?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Friendly Meeting]

Well, Astrana had never heard about this cafe which might be an issue. But it seemed like this was yet another transformative disease through it didn't sound like anything she had ever heard of.
"Miss Siena, are you certain that this disease is magical in nature? Magical diseases don't usually spread through sneezing. Furthermore, by 'helping you' I assume you mean turning the people in the cafe back to normal? Since that sounds more like a job for VIGIL than MERC unless someone's paying us to do it."

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

"Yes, I'm sure!" Siana replies, an exasperated edge in her voice. "I don't know of any normal disease that transforms someone's body over the course of five minutes. That's in the vein of lycanthropy or something." Not that she knows for sure, since lycanthropy of the common mythos variety works very differently from that found in her homeland. "And... I don't know how to get in touch with VIGIL. If you need pay to do anything, we can take it out of my check. Please help?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Friendly Meeting]

"Alright, I do need to ask these things as identifying the disease is the first step to cure it. That said, since I don't think I'd be of much help from here and I'm not a field agent so it would be rather unorthodox to flung myself into a situation I know nearly nothing about. So my professional advice is that I'm going to give you the number to VIGIL-" A pause. "Actually, now that I think about it, I'm going to give you the number to HALO as this is more of their field of expertise. Does that sound reasonable? HALO has both warlocks, witches and scientists working for them so they should have no trouble dealing with this sort of thing."

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

Siana pauses to consider this. Even as weird as things were between the two of them, Astrana was at least a proven expert. She could trust whatever help the warlock could give her. Going to total strangers in a different organization would drop that benefit. She'd really prefer to get whatever help Astrana could offer.

Then again, going to HALO is the help she's offering. If Astrana trusts them, maybe Siana should, too.

"...All right. Go ahead." Siana says, grabbing a pen from the hostess's podium so she could write the number in her hand.

[Shadowcaller]

[Friendly Meeting]

"Alright, good." Astrana will inform Siana of HALO's numbers as well as the numbers of some important HALO members. "Now, once you reach HALO I want you to tell them them exact address to this cafe and everything you know about this disease. Every little tidbit of information can be important to them."

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

"Yes, ma'am." Siana confirms, scribbling the list of phone numbers on her hand. "...Okay. I guess that'll do it. I'll have to see who answers." She smiles a little, though obviously Astrana won't hear that through the phone. "I'll let you get back to it, then. Thanks, Miss Ty-Ramera."

She knows that's not how it's spelled or pronounced, but it's an honorific and therefore a compliment. Sort of.

There'll be an awkward pause where Siana waits for Astrana to hang up, and if she doesn't, and doesn't add anything else to the conversation, she'll hang up and dial the first of the numbers the warlock gave her... which is presumably HALO's front desk.

[Morty]

[Glass Lake Penitentiary]

"Hazel" shrugs. "I dunno. Maybe they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart? Or maybe getting to be Hazel Reeverman is just that awesome." The latter suggestion is accompanied by another predatory grin.

"I'm sure there are some upsides to hijacking the body of someone in a prison." Michalson meets "Hazel's" eye. "Unless, of course, Hazel's passenger doesn't plan on staying here."

[Friendly Meeting]

"This is HALO, how can we help?"

The voice that answers is female and, it seems, human.

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

Siana takes a deep breath and essentially repeats what she said to Astrana; she's at the scene of an outbreak of some kind of magical disease that turns people foxy, located at Cafe Pretentieux (she includes the address this time). The disease is spread through sneezing, she and Jade have quarantined the building, and they really need a doctor or a mystic or someone to come down so they can treat it.

"...and that's the situation." Siana concludes, taking in a deep breath to brace herself. "Is there anyone you can send to help us?"

[Morty]

[Friendly Meeting]

Giving people fox features isn't as bad as some things Dorota was expecting to hear, but this might just be the first stage of something more serious. Best to nip it in the bud before it has a chance to prove to be just that.

"I can be there soon with an assistant. I'm an alchemist. I can wear a hazmat suit and my assistant is a golem. Hopefully we can learn something."

[bc56]

Friendly Meeting
"How's it going? Don't worry about any costs. I'll cover it. It's my fault anyway." Probably. Who else could it be? There are some powerful entities that seem to enjoy playing pranks on Jade, but she doesn't think this is one of them. "I think I've got everyone staying put, so we need to figure out a cure."

[Ironsmith]

[Friendly Meeting]

"Good, good. Thank you, and please hurry." Siana concludes, giving Jade a hopeful little smile. "Well, good news. Help is officially on the way. So as long as we keep this contained, there's a decent chance... of..." Siana trails off as she mentally retraces their steps through here and remembers something important; Jade's cold was already in full swing before they met up here.

"Um... Miss Fisher? Who else did you see after you left the house earlier tonight?"

[bc56]

Friendly Meeting
"Just my brother. He's the one who called me to warn me, he's got the same symptoms. He's contained for now, but he's at a business meeting and worried someone will come looking for him." Hopefully that's not going to happen soon. A large part of that sentence was Jade avoiding mentioning superhero business: since Siana isn't in on the secret, she can't be more open about it.

[Vahnavoi]

[Glass Lake Penitentiary]



"I'm sure there are some upsides to hijacking the body of someone in a prison." Michalson meets "Hazel's" eye. "Unless, of course, Hazel's passenger doesn't plan on staying here."

"Few prisoners enjoy staying in prison" she says, deadpan. "My sentence is limited, I'll get out someday. Or are you asking me if I'm planning a daring escape? Nah. But Jackie's getting out soon, and I may have asked her if she'd help get me out too. Perfectly legally, of course, if at all possible."

[Ironsmith]

Friendly Meeting
"Just my brother. He's the one who called me to warn me, he's got the same symptoms. He's contained for now, but he's at a business meeting and worried someone will come looking for him." Hopefully that's not going to happen soon. A large part of that sentence was Jade avoiding mentioning superhero business: since Siana isn't in on the secret, she can't be more open about it.

[Friendly Meeting]

"...'At a business meeting' doesn't sound very contained to me..." Siana says worriedly. But even knowing that, there isn't a whole lot she can do with the information. She'll just have to hope Jade's right and he's not going to kickstart an epidemic himself.

For that matter, there's not much she can do at all right now except wait for the HALO people to arrive.

[Morty]

[Friendly Meeting]

The help from HALO arrives as quickly as possible, but it did take some time. It appears that the help consists of a human woman in a hazmat suit and a clay golem about two metres in height. The golem is pushing a cart full of alchemy supplies and the woman is carrying a bag. They both stop in front of the cafe.

"Hello? I'm from HALO. We talked on the phone. Let me in so we can find out what's wrong and how to fix it."

[bc56]

Friendly Meeting Fox Outbreak
"I hope that suit is secure," Jade isn't worried about the golem. She opens the door quickly, sneezes away from Dorota, and shuts it behind the alchemist. "I'm Jade; I'm the one responsible for this mess." The nine-tailed fox gestures at the restaurant, where people are in various stages of transformation into more nine-tailed foxes.