Scene #8959: Experience the GOATEL! 2

Owner	Pose
Madeleine Cadrasteia	PREVIOUSLY ON MCRD FILES A crew of elites gathered in Madison, Wisconsin and set out toward Duluth, Minnesota in hopes of investigating a goat-themed hotel and its mysterious claims of a "Goat-Man". After a brief encounter with a floating bog and some socializing with the locals, they continued on their way and arrived in Duluth. On checking in at the Goatel, Madeleine learned that a picture of the elites made it into a local paper. The elites have been recognized as offworlders, but their motives for being here are yet to be discovered. AND NOW, THE CONCLUSION "So," Madeleine says between mouthfuls of pizza, "What's our plan?" She pokes at a brochure that was waiting on the coffee table when the elites entered their cabin, detailing a schedule of when and where guests can see the Goat-Man - usually around mealtimes, plus a mid-afternoon 'goa-tea party'. "I was originally thinking we could get some sleep and see the Goat-Man at breakfast, but that's a lotta time for ownership to beef up security and put their best foot forward in the morning. We could try to do some snooping around overnight, especially those of us with a good disguise." She glances at Rita, but her eyes don't linger. "I'd try the same myself, only my style's pretty distinctive and I can't do anything about my eyes. What do we think?"
Ozhira	Upon arrival, Ozhira brought out the only thing they had packed for this trip: A large bright orange plastic bucket sourced from some hardware store or another. This was carried into the motel room, cradled in both hands. After lodging was sorted out, the Beast had set it down, stepped into it, and then-- well, it looks a bit like Ozhira has just sat down, but it's quite obvious that they just melted into a puddle of red goo almost to the bucket's brim. Their human disguise head remains, though somewhat misshapen in a cute blobby kind of way that's only accentuated by a relaxed little sharp-toothed smile on their closed-eyed face. "We relax," is all the creature says to explain this. When pizza comes their way, they just open their mouth and frog-tongue the offered slice. It's gone in one bite, followed by the soft sound of a billion microscopic mouths cronching away at greasy toppings and crispy crust. Matters shift from relaxation to work, which does little to change Ozhira's current state, though they are clearly paying attention. At the mention of disguise, the head shifts. Crablike legs extend from the edge of the bucket, hauling their head up free of the red soup beneath. Now operating as two entities, Ozhira can work and relax at the same time..! "We will go." the Devourer states, "We are-- used to not being seen. Of going where, we should not. Of appearing as other things." The head-crab Ozhira scuttles sidelong across the floor and then up the wall. A leg presses into the vent cover near the ceiling and-- without removing the cover at all-- the entire horrorbeast slides through the slats and out of sight into the motel ventilation system. A few moments later, that same marshmallowy comfy face pops back up out of Ozhira's bucket as a separate version of them.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru made room decisions slightly easier because she doesn't need a bed, as her Mallet recharges when she's asleep... which means she isn't human-sized (or close to it, anyway) but bare inches tall. She wasn't eager to explain why she didn't need a bed, but she didn't claim one, and put all of her things on one of the coffee tables instead. She didn't much care which one as long as it was one of the other girls' rooms, so Ozhira and Luigi are safe. (She really does not want to be in the same room as Ozhira's bucket.) But right now she's her more accustomed-to-the-Multiverse four feet tall and putting a healthy dent in her second piece of pizza, sitting the couch with her feet swinging. It never occured to Shinmyoumaru that being in the paper was a bad thing. She immediately decided that she wanted to keep the picture, and if nobody stopped her has claimed at least one copy of the paper so she could do that. But now that Madeleine is talking about sneaking around... Shinmyoumaru swallows before she speaks. "I can sneak around and they won't see me," she says, confidently. "But what if he's not here? What if he stays somewhere else at night...? Not everybody working here lives here, right? Especially if it's not really a goat-man and he doesn't look like it when he's not here..." She considers for a few moments longer. "Anyway, if they think we're coming at breakfast, maybe they won't pay attention to us before that? Do we have to make a reservation?" Shinmyoumaru has learned! A little bit. She does watch Ozhira go with some dismay. "I'm not going through those," she informs everybody else. "I'm going to use DOORS. Or at least windows."
Rita Ma	Rita "isn't here" right now, of course. The pale bright-eyed young lady with short dark hair and a fetching pink-green windbreaker is utterly convincing. Of course, the windbreaker is so much tentacle-flesh, textured and chromatophore-colored. And so's the hair, and so's the skin, Rita all perfectly wrapped-up in herself. The wrapping can't change her voice, but they didn't photograph her voice, after all. Its apparent flawlessness really recontextualizes the fact that she didn't bring a change of clothes. She puts her small bag on the fold-out couch, assuming without asking that no-one will care to share a room with her. "I could get you some sunglasses, Ms. Madeleine," she says while everyone else eats- she 'wasn't hungry', allegedly- "but I'm not sure that'll help. I think the first thing is to make some calls. I have a lot of friends who might know somebody who knows something. And if I get up on the motel roof, I could..." She stares after Ozhira scuttling away, horrified equally 'by' them and 'on their behalf'. It's clear who more values being normal.
Luigi	Luigi sets up on the fold-out couch of whichever room, trying to not feel too conspicuous about being the only guy here in a party full of girls. Pizza! Pizza is good. Luigi suggests getting a pizza with every topping, and attempts a joke about calling it 'the buddhist special', and then just sort of trails off awkwardly when people don't laugh or get it. "I guess I'll play decoy?" suggests Luigi. "Like, actually go do the tour and the meet and greet and such, so the management here focuses on me and doesn't think to go looking for the rest of you." This feels notably safer than sneaking around, too.
Dysnomia	Dysnomia joins Rita in watching Ozihra...Work, her mouth twisting into brief grimace. "I suppose I should be impressed." She muttered, but she didn't sound it. The last time someone had tried to put her into a bucket, she was recovering from Walpurgisnacht in L corp's dubious care. Did they just not CARE? "Stars..." She shook her head, turning away before her appetite was irrevokably spoiled. "Not one with EVERYTHING, yet." Dysnomia corrects, taking a slice of pizza for herself. She pulled a rough rock of what appeared to be...Gold? Ripped in its raw form, out of the earth...? And let a claw of violet plasma extends from one finger, shaving off thin slices of it to fall onto the pizza. When she finally took a bite, it was a little burnt by dozens of narrow slivers of half-molten gold...But she smiled, nonetheless. "I guess it will make us more conspicious if we're...Famous." Dysnomia grumbled, holding up her arm and pulling back her sleeve--a seemingly meaningless gesture, until a skin-tight substance crawled down it, resolving into the arm of her suit. A light flickered in the air in front of her, resolving into a holographic screen. "If they're trying to clean up their act, maybe they're leaving other kinds of trails...I'll see if I can't get an idea of where to start." The wifi password was on the table...But Dysnomia wasn't interested in the visitor account. There had to be a way to get admin access, and if there was, maybe she could find out what was on the employee network. She went hunting for something--work emails about the goat, alerts on how to put on a show for the 'famous' offworlders...Anything that might give them a lead.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine grimaces just a little as Ozhira splits into two separately conscious beings. Something about it raises an uncomfortable philosophical question in the Excrucian's mind, but she doesn't voice it. Slipping along the cabin's vents just gets Ozhira to the outside of the cabin - but it's easy to find an exterior vent on the main building to slip in through. There's quite a few turbine vents on the roof of the windowless wing of the Goatel, and following one of those takes Ozhira through a series of pipes and finally out of a steam hood in what appears to be some kind of laboratory. Before they drop out of the hood, however, they hear approaching voices and footsteps. The Devourer's acute hearing picks up three heartbeats. The conversation involves a lot of complicated words, some of which Ozhira faintly recognizes as organic chemical names. The trio are discussing some kind of nutrient and vitamin mix, like what Ozhira was fed at the lab where they first awakened, before the scientists there discovered the creature's taste for raw flesh. There's the sound of glassware being moved around, probably sent to be washed after the end of a workday in the lab, and the trio moves along, finishes their round of the lab, and leaves. On their way out they lock up the door but that's rarely stopped Ozhira, has it? Slipping out of the steam hood, Ozhira finds themself in what is indeed a chemical lab. Stills, centrifuges, all sorts of equipment that tickles a memory somewhere in Ozhira's collective consciousness. This doesn't appear to be a place where chemicals are produced en masse due to an absence of large vats or mixers, but rather a place where they are designed and concocted in small batches. There's a regular door leading out, easy enough to slip under, and another door across the room with an electronic lock and an airtight seal. Possibly a refrigeration unit? - Rita makes some phone calls, and eventually gets in touch with a local-enough informant who she can ask about the Goatel. "So yeah, this Goatel, huh? Real weird place. Sprang up outta nowhere a couple years back, probably just someone's passion project. Like runnin' a cupcake restaurant, y'know? Sorta place that's just a hole you pour money into. Few months ago it was seeing some hard times, there was talk of it closin', that sort of thing. Then this goat-guy comes outta nowhere and starts putting in appearances, suddenly folks're comin' all over the state to see 'im. Next thing we know they've got money enough to remodel, put a whole new wing on the place. Only, you know the funny thing? They haven't added any guest capacity since they built those cabins." Getting onto the roof is trivial for someone of Rita's abilities. It's after sundown and her visual camouflage can fool any external CCTV cameras. What does she do once she's up there?
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Mia stays in the hotel cabin, worming (wyrming?) her way into the hotel staff network. It's only well-secured by local standards, and Nine Moons tech is far beyond what a reasonable sysadmin would expect to see here. There's extra layers of security on the email server that'll take time to bypass, because it's hosted via a large tech company's remote web services, but accessing the staff calendar is easy enough for someone of Dysnomia's talents and resources. It's mostly business conferences, but something sticks out to the etherwyrm's eye. There's a single event marked with an 'important' star: 'GOAT WEDDING NAME TBD'. Dysnomia also cracks into the CCTV systems with help from her suit. In addition to a front-door camera on each of the cabins and hallway and entrance/exit cams in the main hotel building, there's a pair of cameras labeled 'G1' and 'G2'. The first is an ordinary-looking hotel room, only, hotels shouldn't have cameras inside the rooms, should they? The reason becomes apparent on closer inspection: there's a figure in the bed, and it's got large, corkscrew horns. Camera 'G2' is locked behind a bespoke password system, which won't be impossible to break, but it does give time enough to wonder: why are there two goatman cameras? - "I guess I'll play decoy?" suggests Luigi. "Like, actually go do the tour and the meet and greet and such, so the management here focuses on me and doesn't think to go looking for the rest of you." <J-IC-Scene> Madeleine Cadrasteia aside to Shinmyoumaru, "Say, maybe you could hide like, in my boot or something and slip out halfway through the tour? We could try to get into a 'backstage' area because we're VIPs. Might be safer than breaking a window." <J-IC-Scene> Shinmyoumaru Sukuna, firmly: "Hat. I don't go in boots!" "Fair enough," Madeleine says. "I think the three of us will request a tour. Let me just get a hat." She returns from her room a moment later wearing a comically tiny top-hat, just big enough to conceal an inchling within. It's the sort of hat that one pins in place, thankfully, so Shinmyoumaru at least has stable cover. The front desk staff are even more excited to see two offworlders than they were to see one, and the pair of clerks have to do rock-paper-scissors to determine who has to go fetch the manager. The other one stays and bombards the elites with questions about what their home worlds are like, and why they chose to come to Duluth. Madeleine is halfway through answering with some excuse about a freshwater aquarium when the manager, a bald thirtysomething man in a dark blue polo and tan slacks, comes out from the back. "I was told you wanted a tour? I think we can arrange that, since you're such important guests. Our first offworlders ever, if you'll believe it!" The tour starts out mostly normal, with a quick show around the lobby, but the unique properties of the Goatel become apparent when the guests are shown to the dining room. Instead of many smaller tables, one very long table dominates the room - and there's a glass wall cordoning off one seat at the very far end. "We have to ensure the safety of our Goat-Man, you see," the manager explains. "There's little holes in the glass to allow you to converse with him, and of course you and he can all watch each other eat, but we limit physical contact for his health." Madeleine excuses herself to the restroom, where she unpins the hat and gently deposits Shinmyoumaru on the floor. "Good luck," the huntress whispers as she departs back to the dining room, where Luigi is being subjected to the finer points of the Goat-Man's meal schedule. "So, where would you like to see next? We have a rec room, fitness center, pool, and of course there's the goat barn."
Rita Ma	Not-Rita steps outside the cabin to take her call- Watch sources have to be kept secure, after all, even in matters like this- and leans against the siding in the cool nighttime air. "So it fell on hard times, and then... mmm. You think they're doing something big inside the motel they had to move the guest rooms outside for? If they just caught a goatman, he'd only need one or two rooms, right? ... Mmmm. No, thank you! Good night!" Click. Then Not-Rita becomes not-anything, like a mimic octopus blending into the seafloor, and 'not-anything' hops up onto the motel roof and makes tappy-tap quiet footsteps along the shingles. Just then, Mia spies someone on the cameras, and... <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Can you tell me what room? ... What direction is the light coming into it?" <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Hm. I can narrow your search." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "I can see the parking lot. Let's say...Second floor, front side of the building." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Thank you, Ms. Mia!" Once 'not-anything' has navigated to the building's front, she hangs down from the roof by a tentacle and peers into each of the second-story rooms' windows. That should give her a clear view of the goatman, with no risk of being seen herself. Her flip-top phone presses itself against the window, appearing to float as if held by a poltergeist or dangled on fishing-line, and shines its screen's glow into the room. A message is typed into its notepad app for the goatman to see: Are you being mistreated?
Luigi	Luigi plays it up a bit. "Ah! The grand tour of the grand Goat-el! Perfetto!" He gets shown to... a dining room! That's... thrilling. It's... a little interesting? The arrangement. There's... seating on one side of the wall, and seating on the other side of the wall. Luigi smiles and nods. "That's - neat! So, ah, does the Goat Man sit at this end, and we all crowd around the far end? That looks a little bit too small, eh?" He's trying, but he really doesn't have much interesting to say here, at what's apparently one of the major stops of this 'tour'. His eyes glaze over a bit when they get into the feeding schedule, while he silently confirms what he'd been wondering about - this truly is a single attraction roadside stop. They've got one thing here, and they're going to need to stretch it out into a dozen pieces. "Oh, no, I think... yes, the difference between a 12 noon and a 12:30 feeding time matters a lot," he says, mostly on autopilot. Being a hero also means that sometimes you have to smile, nod, and put up with a lot of people who want your attention but don't respect your time or interest level. "Okie-dokie." It actually takes Luigi a moment to process that there's been an actual question asked. "Oh! The... goat barn, yes! That should be out back, right?" Well away from where everyone else is investigating.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru finishes her pizza before pulling out the Miracle Mallet. It's a little pedestrian to use a wishing tool (which it is) for nothing other than to change her size, but she does it every day; it's such a little wish it barely has any cost beyond the Mallet needing to recharge, eventually. "Be small!" And then, well - Shinmyoumaru is small. Small enough to pick up in your hand, if you're so inclined; small enough that she fits under a hat, though the hat is short enough that she sits down rather than try to stand up under it. She seems to have done this before... It's probably best not to ask where the pizza went. Honestly, the hardest part for Shinmyoumaru is not joining in the conversation ahead of time. But she's good and quiet while Madeleine and Luigi make small talk with the front desk staff, and then the manager. She doesn't move around either. This is a perfect disguise! (As long as Madeleine doesn't take her hat off, and as long as nobody can see through cloth, detect life forms, or use several other unusual senses. But beyond that!) Eventually Madeleine lifts her hat off, and Shinmyoumaru figures where she is - a bathroom? Well, it's out of the way enough. "Okay!" she replies, just as quiet, before slipping out when Madeleine opens the door. Shinmyoumaru is very used to creeping around humans, by this point. Almost nobody looks down if she's quiet enough, and even when they do she knows how to keep out of sight, moving from obstacle to obstacle or under tables and chairs, service trolleys for food or towels, and other similar things to break line of sight. Even if she is spotted, if she drops down just right and arranges her robe, she looks like a dropped bit of cloth. And she's fast, scurrying rather than walking. Shinmyoumaru has two goals. First, she wants to peek into the employee spaces as she goes. She can push open doors juuust a little and look, or clamber up and stick her eye up to keyholes, or even shrink herself even smaller to squeeze her head under the door, between the lower edge and the floor. (She can even get into rooms that way if they don't have security doors that seal - and most rooms in a hotel don't.) She doesn't know what she's looking for so she's just peeking, seeing if anything presents itself. She does not really expect to find anything about a wedding. But her actual planned goal is to, as she promised, check the rooms that used to be guest rooms but aren't and don't have windows, working her way toward that 'new wing' Rita head about, where they built but didn't add any guest capacity. There has to be something in there, right? If it was more places for people to stay, that would be one thing, but if it's not... Well, what are they?
Ozhira	Once outside, Ozhira's form takes that of a cockroach, skittering along until they find another entry point and squeeze into it. In these new ducts, their shape changes again. The Beast slithers through ductwork as a formless crimson mass, extending pseudopods forward and dragging itself forward at a downright alarming pace. They only pause at junctions, extending feelers in each direction before deciding where to go. When they eventually emerge into a steam hood, the creature ceases and clings to the hood's inner lining. Multiple sets of mismatched eyes form across the crimson surface, scanning down, around. One descends just enough to peer beneath the hood's lip, then retreats when voices wander into range. Ozhira remains very still like this, listening and waiting and suppressing the urge to transform the room below them into a gore-soaked art piece. Fortunately, the voices wander off before their willpower fades. They drop out of the hood with the wet splat of raw meat, then roll their mass off the countertop onto the floor. After a moment, they rise again in the shape of a human woman; the appearance is notably different from their usual, a blonde person of Slavic descent, wearing glasses and a professionally buttoned labcoat with dark blue slacks. With this appearance, they lean forward to glance over some of the chemical labels. Pausing at the refrigerator door, the creature considers the electronic lock. They could smash it. Ruin the wiring. Or tear it right off the mounting. These considerations roll across the collective consciousness almost as a vote. After some deliberation, they press their human hand against the electronic locking panel. The palm liquifies, sinking into the spaces between the keys and infiltrating the electronic lock's circuitry. They are, however, not a hacker. It is far from gentle when they emit a pulse of bioelectricity into the circuitry to fry the hell out of it. Stepping back, Ozhira removes their hand and all their biomass from the panel, then grasps the door handle and pulls it open.
Dysnomia	It surprised her, as she realized it. Her hand shook, slightly, as she swiped from window to window, as she started the process to brute force the passcode on 'G2.' For a while, she forgot to keep up the habit of breathing. But...Stars. She'd missed this. The CTVs splayed out before her on holographic screen let her imagine, for a moment, that her vision had widened. Voices buzzed in her ear, a handful of stray fates, wandering on their course while she nudged them along. A floating phone appeared in the window of the G1's shot, and after a moment of eye-widening alarm, Dysnomia tried to put the camera feed on a loop for the next...Say...Five minutes, to conceal it. Just another quiet way to sway the course of fate that the rest of the world might never know. By and large, she let the suit do its own work on breaking the codes. The actual firm that handled its email, THAT could be risky--but she tries anyway. On instinct, she attaches terms to the search to cut the wheat from the chafe. 'Wedding,' 'camera,' 'security,' 'loyalty.' Even then, she tried to look into the contractors used in the construction of the new cabins. Anything out of place. Any resources used that wouldn't make sense in just another wing of a hotel that might betray what purposes it might be turned to that wouldn't involve new guests.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Are you being mistreated? The goat-man wakes with a start to a tapping on his window. Spying the floating phone, he reaches for the underside of the nightstand... but something, curiosity perhaps, convinces him to not set off whatever alarm button is down there. Instead, he gets out of bed, walks up to the camera in the corner of the room, and pulls a little privacy curtain over it. Dysnomia's view is immediately obstructed by dark cloth. Only then does the goat-man walk over to the window and open it a crack. "If you're PETA, I already told you I'm not interested. And if you're the newspaper, they pay me enough not to talk to you. But- hey, where are you?" He reaches out the open window and waves a hand first below, then above the phone - when his fingers brush against Rita's arm, he reflexively jerks his hand back an inch in surprise. "You'd... better come in, whoever you are." He opens the window the rest of the way. Once Rita's inside, the goatman finally begins to answer her question. "I wouldn't say so, no. They pay me well, and it's free room and board, right? I can't exactly go out without causing a stir, but there's plenty to do here on my own. You're not a local either, are you? They've got so many cat videos on this world's internet! Anyway. I'm better off than I was before I took this gig, lemme tell ya." He hesitates. "Might wanna ask the new girl, though. She doesn't talk to me outside of work, so I dunno what's going on with her." - Shinmyoumaru winds her way down corridors, hiding from the few staff out and about at this hour, toward the mysterious new wing of the building. On her way she has a close brush with three people carrying lab coats, but they're focused on conversing with each other about where they're going for drinks tonight. Soon enough the inchling finds that the entire new wing is behind a locked door - but not one she can't squeeze under. She finds herself in the back-backrooms of the hotel, sparsely decorated compared to the goat-themed everything of the Goatel's guest-facing areas. In one of the storage rooms she finds something peculiar, but not unexpected. Paper streamers, vases of plastic flowers, bags of rice... wedding supplies. And at the center of it all, on a pair of mannequins, a tuxedo and a brilliant wedding gown, complete with veil and train.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Ozhira takes the shape of a scientist and overloads the door circuit. After a second the screen goes dead and they hear the latch unlocking. Opening the door, they pass through into a well-chilled continuation of the laboratory, only... something's not the same about this half of the lab. It's not for making small batches of chemicals. This looks more like a mad scientist's workshop. There's a empty cylindrical tank against one wall, about eight feet high and four feet wide, with an assortment of tubes and pipes connecting it to other devices around the room. Beyond it are two similar, but smaller tanks, only they're not empty. Floating within each tank is what appears to be an infant child... with the head of a goat. Something about them seems incompletely formed, like Ozhira's puddingy face in the bucket back at the cabin. - Dysnomia sets up a loop on the 'G1' camera, and on her camera feed she sees the goat-man rise from his bed and close a curtain over the camera for privacy. The email server yields results, finally, and it turns out that the 'GOAT WEDDING NAME TBD' is indeed, a goat wedding - between the goat-man and some yet-unknown-to-the-public goat-woman. And deep in an email chain, she discovers something very striking: the wedding date has only been set recently, according to one email, because 'the kids are finally in progress'. What's more, the construction details for the new wing of the Goatel are very unusual. It's the stuff you'd expect to see from an industrial plant, lots of steel tubing and pipes and chutes and vents. Plenty of high-voltage power conduits, water cooling systems, the works. - Luigi and Madeleine are led outside to the goat barn, where they are introduced to, well, the goats. Many of them are sleeping, but a few are still out in the yard, nibbling away at the grass. "Looks like we've got Dopey, Sleepy, and Doc up and about right now. You can pet them if you want! I'm afraid we can't let you feed them outside of their normal mealtimes, though. Normally we give them breakfast around- wait a sec." The manager, standing among the goats and facing toward the hotel building, notices something over Luigi's shoulder. "I have to check on something. Stay here, be nice to the goats - I'm sure you will, they're lovely aren't they - and I'll be back in just a few minutes." He sets off at a jog toward the building where, Luigi and Madeleine notice, a single window is open on the second floor.
Luigi	And in the goat barn there's... goats! This is actually more interesting than the dining room. It's like... a very small petting zoo. Yes, Luigi will pet the goats. "Good goats. Nice goats. Yes, yes." Everyone else is stuck doing the dangerous risky sneaking around, while Luigi gets to pet the goats. Life is great! Everything is going fine till the manager looks at Luigi's shoulder. Reflexively, Luigi turns his head, also looking at his shoulder, wondering what he has on there - oh, wait, the manager is looking over Luigi's shoulder. ... Over his shoulder, at the open window. "Oh - wait!" Think quick, Luigi. "You haven't..." Think quicker! "... told me the names of the goats that are taking a nap!" Luigi goes to start going after the manager, reaching out to grab his arm, not looking where he's going- squelch Luigi looks down, knowing what he's about to see, but having to look anyway. "... My good shoes... mama mia..." "..." Oh, right. "Wait!" He runs after the manager, trying to intercept. "And - we need you to take a picture of us with the goats!" he adds. "Who's going to hold the camera if you're not here!"
Rita Ma	Not-Rita makes a good show of just being an acrobatic human who can turn invisible; soft footsteps slip into his room, and then she slowly shimmers back into view (tentacle already withdrawn) once she's out of view of the window. Even though she's taller now, she puts on a youthfully charming affect with her awkward smile and the way she folds her hands behind her back after storing the phone. "Ah... thank you, Mr. Goat. It's a little chilly out there!" Polite bow. She tries to tuck her hair behind her ear after, forgetting how short it is now, and makes a little face. "I'm happy to hear that. 'This world'... so you came from somewhere else, and they didn't make you? What's the lab for, then?" "Ah, sorry!" She suddenly realizes she's being impolite. Her finger tugs the corner of her mouth, revealing those not-plausibly-human teeth. "My name's Rita. We're just trying to make sure not-quite-human people are treated okay. If you're happy, that's all that matters. Where could I talk to the woman you work with?" Of course, her hearing's very good. When footsteps start to approach, she holds up a finger, becomes not-anything again, and then quietly-invisibly slips out the open door behind the hotel manager.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Lab coat people... Shinmyoumaru debates following them, but decides that it would be risky and probably not worth the odds of getting caught. She does listen in for as long as they're in earshot, though all she really learns about is a couple places to have a drink. "Hup!" Squeezing under a door is a tight fit even for Shinmyoumaru, but not impossible. It helps that she's on the petite side, though she is going to be a little grumpy about getting her clothes dirty later. At least it's less dirty than crawling on the ground outside. And there she finds... wedding supplies! Shinmyoumaru scurries over to the wedding supplies. This is confirmation they're definitely planning something! She climbs up one of the mannequins, scooting up it like she was going up a tree or a pole, vanishing under the cloth for a few moments until she pokes her head out the neckline of the gown. Climbing all the way up onto the head, Shinmyoumaru uses her new vantage point to look around. They know there's a wedding, they know who it's between and why... but is there another clue in here? She hops back down (and she can hop all the way to the ground, like a bug or a cat) and starts to rummage for things other than the supplies. Paperwork, notes... things that shouldn't belong. She even rummages in the rice to see if something is hidden inside it. But then she has an idea. Will it work? Has the goat-woman worn the dress? They'd have to have her wear it for sizing, right? You can't have a wedding dress that isn't fit and isn't tailored. If she made a dress, she could make one off measurements but she'd have to do the last bit of personal adjustment with the person there... Shinmyoumaru wields her Mallet, winds up, and - "Wake up!" She gives the wedding dress a few moments to manifest itself as a tsukumogami - it looks the same, but it can move under its own power, a little bit, and speak, or at least speak to Shinmyoumaru. She asks, once she's given it enough time: "I know it's kind of sudden, but it's important... Can you tell me about the person who wore you last?"
Dysnomia	For the first time in so, so long, Mia is in her element. Sitting here, in this normal hotel room, Dysnomia feels like she has has a full operation's station laid out before her. A potential threat is approaching her agent. Keep her informed. She enlarges the lobby and hallway cameras. "Target is entering the lobby." Rita might not need it, but she hears routine progress reports from Dysnomia at every step of the manager's approach. "Target on second floor." All while Mia sweeps away the various emails from her vision, pulling up the video feed. This wasn't a video suite--and she didn't have time for complicated work--but when Rita goes invisible, she interrupted the loop with a short burst of visual static. When it lifts, it looks like the camera briefly glitched as the manager entered the goat's rooms, missing the moment that he stood up to greet the manager. The window...She'd have to see if she could edit it, and have to hope no one would immediately go to check the footage in the meantime. But for now, that was secondary. She upped the cycles on the task of breaking the code on G2's camera--what she now interpretted to be the goat woman's camera. "Did you think you could hide this from me...?" She was smiling now, slightly. "No one can, forever."
Ozhira	The chill bothers Ozhira at first. They quickly adjust to it with a modest lipidiform layer. Strolling through this new lab, they pause to examine the wildly different tools and equipment here, circling the larger tank, then examining the smaller tanks and their contents with a curious bird-like chirp. Talk of a wedding on the radio, and wedding supplies, and 'kids on the way' in related messages. Voices chatter back and forth over the impossibly complex link that forms the Devourer's aggregate consciousness until a consensus is reached: So these are the children, then. But what does it mean? Ozhira's outline ripples slightly as various voices within their consciousness express wildly different reactions to the sight. It's clearly beyond the technology of whoever was studying the Devourer when they broke containment. Many are excited, shocked, or horrified by what they see. After a moment, the Beast straightens their posture and turns their back to the tanks, returning attention to the desk. They aren't particularly good with computers; but there are papers here. Ozhira crosses the room to collect them, skimming over the contents. Documents related to the equipment they've already seen, at a glance. The way Ozhira reads is not with the eyes in their human face, which gives them a bit of an unfair advantage in this. It sounds like Dysnomia's idea might be the right one. Some of the creature's myriad voices grow quiet, disappointed. It seems like some hybridization experiment is out of the question. They lift their face upward. Then why the larger tank? Why only one, and why empty? The Goat Man came in from elsewhere and is content here, apparently. The Goat Woman, they know nothing about. 'The kids on the way' are right in front of them, somewhat misshapen but cute nontheless. The scientist-disguised Beast nods once. It all hinges on the Goat Woman's story, then. Ozhira glances at the door to confirm there isn't anyone sneaking in on them snooping where they shouldn't be. That done, the woman's torso extends upward. She splashes face-first into the ceiling vent grille, sliding back into the air system; slurping up the lower torso. After a few seconds, the only hint that anyone was even here is some shifted around papers on the desk. Oh, and the ruined electronic lock. Time to find the Goat Woman.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Luigi's efforts are not wholly in vain - the manager does turn around and quickly rattle off the other goats' names (Grumpy, Happy, Bashful, and Sneezy), but then cuts off his request for a photograph by saying, "I really have to take care of this now, I'm sorry. But I'll be right back for your photograph." Madeleine looks at Luigi and shrugs. "So you came from somewhere else, and they didn't make you?" "Yeah, I'm not from this world. I'm... not very welcome where I'm from, anymore. I made some bad mistakes. These people offered me a fresh start." "What's the lab for, then?" "What lab?" "My name's Rita. We're just trying to make sure not-quite-human people are treated okay. If you're happy, that's all that matters. Where could I talk to the woman you work with?" "Well, Rita, it's nice to meet you? I'm Johann." He offers a handshake. "As for the new lady... I'm not supposed to know where her room is, but I followed the staff once when they were leading her back. She's in the restricted wing, third floor. Didn't see how many doors down, couldn't follow that close. And you didn't hear that from me, okay?" Rita invisibly slips out of the room as the manager finally arrives. "Hey, what's up?" "Is something wrong? I saw the window open. You're not trying to sneak out, are you?" "Goodness, no, why would I do that? I just needed some air is all." "If you say so... but make sure to close it before you go to bed. We don't want PETA creeping around here again. Sorry to bother you, I guess the offworlders visiting has me on edge. Speaking of, I should really go - two of them wanted a group photo with the goats." Rita sees the manager slip back out of Johann's room and down the hall away from her. - "I know it's kind of sudden, but it's important... Can you tell me about the person who wore you last?" "Oh, it was dreadful!" The dress cries. "She doesn't even understand what a wedding is, much less want to have one... I would hate for that to be my fate, to be worn by someone who doesn't want to be married! Please, you have to do something to call this sham wedding off! She lives on the third floor of this wing. Hurry!" - Ozhira swipes some papers from the lab and makes their exit. One of the files contains a curious line: "Subject relocated from containment tank 1 to room 322". That's clue enough for the Devourer, and they follow the pipes, poking an eye out of a vent here and there to scan for room numbers. - Dysnomia pulls off her CCTV stunt flawlessly, and turns her full attention to the 'G2' camera. Finally able to bypass the passcode system, what she sees is a striking remove from Johann's room. This room is mostly bare, save for a heavy coating of straw on the floor. Curled up in a pile of straw in one corner is another goat-headed figure. Mia also notices a bell on the inside of the door, and numerous wide scratches on the surface of the door itself. Just then she sees a shadow outside the door - one of the other elites, her hallway camera confirms. Ozhira, Rita, and Shinmyoumaru converge at the goat-woman's room, with Dysnomia watching. The physical alarm on the door isn't something Mia can disable remotely - if they open that door, someone's going to know. What's the play? - "Say 'cheese'!"
Rita Ma	Rita* can stay invisible about as long as an ordinary person can hold their breath- which is to say, not very long at a jog, but long enough. She shimmers back into view, still in 'dark hair and windbreaker' mode, just as Shinmyoumaru and Ozhira arrive. First, a silly little wave and a greeting: "Johan was really nice! We don't need to worry about him, I think." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Do not open that door." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Mmm! I can get us through the wall. Just a second." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia continues to explain, "There's a bell on the inside of the door. It will sound if opened." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Don't let the cameras see this please." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Copy." Second, business. A ten-foot-long blue tentacle extrudes from Rita's sleeve, flattens like the blade of a band saw, and smoothly slides through the wall to cut an amply-sized hole with only a quiet shhshshsh of friction. The cut-out slab is gently lowered to the ground; Rita steps through the hole, beckons the others to do so too, and then the tentacle weaves around itself to fill the gap, changes color, and detaches to calcify. It looks perfect. Years from now, maybe an electrician or plumber will discover that the pristine drywall is actually coral-like sponge. She'll get rid of the slab later. "Hello?" she says, as if that were perfectly ordinary. "We're here to help. Please don't be scared."
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru's expression darkens at the dress' revelation. "That's what I want to do!" And that's the information she needs. Third floor? "We'll make sure you don't have to get worn for something like that. Thank you!" she calls, as she runs back toward the door, crouching down so she can squeeze back out through it. By the time anyone else checks the storage room, the dress will be back as it always is; it wasn't truly alive or intelligent, not being nearly old or well-used in its role enough to be a tsukumogami without the Miracle Mallet being involved. Shinmyoumaru will still keep her promise, though. Shinmyoumaru catches up with the others, running flat-out... though still small. "You found the room! Great!" she says, pleased; she knew what floor and hall but not exactly which room and she was not looking forward to having to check every one. "We need to stop the wedding and help her, before everything happens..." She watches Rita cut the wall with interest. This is less gross to her than basically anything Ozhira does, probably because it's less... messy. (Though by Rita standards, this is pretty non-messy too.) Shinmyoumaru would have made a small hole, or let them fit through one; this one is pretty convenient, though. But Shinmyoumaru stops for a moment before she goes through the door. She steps up next to the fallen drywall. "You can be little too," she says, with a bit less volume than she normally manages. The chunk of fallen drywall shrinks, and shrinks, and shrinks, until Shinmyoumaru picks it up and carries it with her, the whole thing only a couple inches square. (She could use it as a shield right now.) It's definitely not going to leave any remnants on the floor, though. "Yeah!" she exclaims, after Rita speaks. "We want to help. You shouldn't be forced to stay here! Nobody should be forced to stay inside where they don't want to..."
Ozhira	It takes some navigating through the ductwork to get to where they want to be. Eventually a pseudopod extends in the vicinity of the right room. They drop from the air duct as a wad of red sludge in a convenient camera blind spot, with the wet splat of raw meat. A moment later, they rise up in the disguise of the blonde scientist rather than the creature's usual disguise. Dysnomia warns of an alarm. Rita offers a workaround. Ozhira nods with a simple statement of "Teach us." They watch attentively as she cuts a door in the wall and then replaces it, letting out a soft chirp especially as Rita repairs the wall. They reach out, giving it a tap, then nod slightly, "We see." The beast swivels in place when Rita addresses the goat woman directly. Raising their hands, they push up the corners of their mouth to create a smile, "We are friendly. Are you well?"
Dysnomia	<J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Do not open that door." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Mmm! I can get us through the wall. Just a second." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia continues to explain, "There's a bell on the inside of the door. It will sound if opened." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Don't let the cameras see this please." The minute that Rita asks for privacy, Mia's already set to work on hacking the camera and its records, trying the loop trick again. It takes a moment, and it's done. <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Copy." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Any updates on the 'children?'" <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "And the machines?" <J-IC-Scene> Ozhira says, "They grow in containment vessels." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "One is adult sized...And the goat woman is a new addition..." It's been a good day for Dysnomia. Maybe that's why she starts talking. "I've seen somethingl ike this in the Nine Moons," she understates, tapping a finger on the table. "Artifical wombs, used to grow people. And why finish them at the infant stage, when you can grow them to one where they can be more useful to you." She says it all so...Blase. Perhaps explained more, when she eventually says; "It's how I was born." "I imagine they used his genetic information as a baseline. It would explain why they're treating him differently; using any of the others as a base could risk genetic deterioration."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"We're here to help. Please don't be scared." The goat-woman wakes with a start and scrambles to her feet, hands raised unsteadily in the direction of the interlopers. "Don't... be scared," she croaks. She looks at the other elites as they speak to her, then responds with obvious difficulty. "Forced to stay..." She gestures at herself. "Yes. Want to go... be with others." She turns to the window and points at the barn, where the goats wander around Madeleine and Luigi as the manager snaps photos. "You... will help?" She takes a few hopeful steps toward the door.
Rita Ma	"Yeah! Sometimes you've got to--" Rita starts saying to Ozhira, before the goat-woman rouses and she realizes how dire the situation really is. Her eyes widen; breath catches in her throat. Goosebumps prickle up her arms. I really wish Johann wasn't depending on these people, she thinks. "Go be with others?" she says, in a less composed voice than she's been using. Rita crouches down. She glances out the window, but doesn't fully understand. "You...?" Then she swallows. "Oh. ... Do you think she really wants to live with the other goats? Or is that just the best she can hope for, because being a person's been so bad?" There's really only one way to find out. Rita takes the goat-woman's hand, smiles feebly, and (with a quiet whicker-crack slicing apart the mechanical alarm if nobody else disarms it first) leads her down and outside towards the barn. Of course, that will mean a confrontation with the manager.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	"I'll help!" Shinmyoumaru confirms. She thinks for a moment - she doesn't see very well in the dark, though she can make out a little, and there's nothing wrong with her ears. Once she's thought about it, she says, "If you want to sneak with me, I can make you little, too... then we can just hide and get carried out!" It's all she can offer - she can't make people invisible or teleport, but she can make them small. It might make the confrontation easier if the manager can't see the goat-woman, after all... Shinmyoumaru herself is perfectly fine running along after, of course. Hiding is pretty trivial for her, and she can get out when nobody is looking. Especially if they don't know to be looking for an inchling, and not a kid. (Pun not intended.)
Dysnomia	Dysnomia stands, finally, tying her hair behind her. Everything else was in place. Now, she had to do her part in the field. With a swipe, she clears the holographic screens, no more than a buzz at the back of her mind. She took a deep breath...And dissolved into mist, rushing into the vents, as Ozhira had. Gratings and blades cut the air to try to control its flow, trying to bar Dysnomia's passage--but it's like an outstretched palm tryign to stop a dark matter wind. She blows through them, safetly out of sight of any prying eyes, doing her best to follow the course into this new wing. When she reaches the broken electronic lock, she doesn't even bother trying to open it. She flows through it like a ghost, and sets her eyes on the machinery. She grimaces at its utter sloppiness, assessing the state of it all, before she approaches the controls herself, navigating the unfamiliar interface where she had to and marshalling her suborned Nine Moons tech to try to bypass anything that might otherwise lock her out of the controls.
Ozhira	Ozhira has no trouble perceiving in the dark, though it isn't with eyesight. Their method is ultrasound echolocation, a dull rumble that's just barely audible. Someone more finely tuned to the auditory like Rita probably has a much better time noticing. They listen to the Goat Woman talk, then crane their neck--slightly too much-- towards the window when she looks out towards the barn. They think about the equipment they had found,a nd the growing goat-children inside. After a moment, the Devourer nods once. "We understand. Maybe. Are you more, goat, than woman?" Their eyes shift towards Rita, "That might be, just home."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	The goat-woman offers Rita an awkward but genuine smile as the join hands, and follows Rita down the hallway with something approaching a spring in her step as Shinmyoumaru scurries behind. Taking one of the exit-only doors right out to the parking lot to avoid the lobby staff is easy enough, and it's off to the goat barn! The trio are a third of the way there, and the manager is halfway back with Madeleine and Luigi in tow, when he recognizes the goat-woman. "Hey! You're not supposed to-" he calls, before cutting himself off. "Who are you? And what are you doing with Clover?" He then says to Luigi and Madeleine, "We also have a goat-woman. It was supposed to be a surprise, you know?" The manager taps a walkie-talkie on his belt. "Security to the parking lot." Behind him, Madeleine's hand drifts to her knife as he addresses Rita again. "You'd better explain yourself before they get here, miss." - Dysnomia rushes like smoke through the ventilation system, into the main lab area and past the unlocked door into the room with the tanks. The technology is clearly offworld stuff, but it's lower-tech than Nine Moons devices so it doesn't take too long to figure out - this panel controls the nutrient mix that goes into the feeding tubes, that one monitors the vat temperature, there's a readout for heart and brain activity (both stable), and so forth. In a few moments the entire system is at her disposal, and she gets a clear picture of what it'd take to remove the goat-children. Unfortunately, they need a few more months in the artificial womb-like environs of the tanks before they could survive outside, and even then they'd be helpless as, well, newborns.
Rita Ma	Rita* offers Shinmyoumaru a hand up for transport, if she wants to go out towards the barn! But she doesn't press the issue. (Her tentacles can pass for the feeling of skin, it turns out, just as easily as they can pass for drywall.) As she, the goat-woman, and Ozhira walk down a hallway briskly, Rita says back over her shoulder: "I used to want to live in the ocean with sea monsters, you know." She wouldn't normally say things like this, but the moment- and the present company- coax it up. "I wouldn't have been happy like that. I wasn't happy like that. But if I lost faith in being loved like a human, at least I could be free like an animal." "... I don't know." Rita* glances back at Clover, and half-smiles. "Maybe you're right. But I can't feel sure. We'll just have to let her pick." - - - - Out in the parking lot, Rita smiles thinly, straightens up her back with ramrod politeness, and lets go of Clover's hand after a reassuring squeeze to step forward. "It was supposed to be a surprise, you know?" "'It'," drops from her lips lifelessly. With a wet organic noise, the disguise unravels; not-Rita becomes Rita, and what used to be her windbreaker and pale skin and short dark hair become a dozen long tentacles that slowly stop pretending to be anything else. Just one wraps around the manager's body, effortlessly lifts his feet off the ground, and squeezes juuust enough to make it clear that she could crumple his skeleton like an empty soda can. Even so, her tone stays brightly polite: "Mr. Manager, please explain why you confined her in a bare room all her life. Please explain why you were growing more. Please explain how that's different from enslavement. And please explain it in a way that makes me not want to kill you. Security won't help." She'd feel bad for Johann's sake. But he doesn't need to know that.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru actually ends up not taking a ride with Rita because she now has a new job. "I'll catch up!" she promises. There is, by the time the manager catches up with the group, a suspicious absence of Shinmyoumaru. The advantage of following along behind while simultaneously being small and easy to overlook is that you can go somewhere else, and when you know exactly where you're going - and how to get there, thanks to Dysnomia - you can do it pretty quickly. Shinmyoumaru doesn't even mind using the vents - she's done it before, if not here, so she can exactly follow Dysnomia's path. (Her approach to gratings are to cut a hole in them and her approach to fan blades is to stop them, for a moment, with the Mallet.) Eventually she pushes into the room with Dysnomia. Shinmyoumaru looks rather dusty and she shakes herself, knocking off a veritable cloud, before she sneezes explosively. "Bleh," she says, folowed by: "Hi!" Shinmyoumaru wanders over to the tanks once she has mostly de-dusted herself. "Mmm..." She doesn't really know all that much about technology; this is a little beyond her ability to understand, but she doesn't need to understand it, precisely, for this. Something about the contents of the tanks makes her uncomfortable in a way she's not really clear on how to express, but she knows she doesn't want to leave them here. They deserve freedom just like the goat-woman does... they're just babies! She draws the Miracle Mallet again and considers exactly how she's going to phrase her wish. Just 'move' wouldn't do it because she wouldn't know where they'd go; taking them out of the tanks safely is beyond her ability to easily ask for because she doesn't understand exactly what she'd need to ask for and it probably wouldn't last forever anyway. Eventually, she settles on: "Come with me!" Shinmyoumaru cannot make the tanks truly mobile forever. But she can make them portable for a while; with Dysnomia making sure she brings all the things she needs to, she can at least get them out of here, along with a little subtank of nutrients. The tanks even glide under their own power, following Shinmyoumaru like lost ducklings. She looks a little smug afterwards. But: "We should really get them out! I don't know how long it will last before everything has to, um, plug in again. And I can't really do anything but keep them going right now..." Indeed, Shinmyoumaru has an arc of visible magic she didn't have before; a rainbow ring of arrows that loops around her, the colours shifting as if the rainbow inside was moving, both sides pointing at a slowly revolving secondary circle. This is more power than she's used from the Miracle Mallet while anyone here was watching her, before.
Ozhira	"Clover," Ozhira repeats when the manager says the name. They come to a stop when Rita did and now stands just a few paces behind her and Clover, eyeing the horned woman for another moment. They consider the Manager's threat, lifting a hand to their chin in performative thought. Rita unravels and grabs him. In the same instance, Ozhira-- for lack of a better term-- unzips. Their entire torso splits open from shoulder to hip, tearing apart into a mass of meat and finger-thick tendrils. The 'girl' completely inverts like this into a roiling mass of quivering scarlet flesh, slumping to the asphalt and then slithering underneath where the manager is held up. The Beast then opens; the space beneath him becoming a horrific void of teeth, crimson tendrils wrapping around his feet and lower legs. "Speak quickly," their voice is completely unchanged from when they were a human just moments ago, "We are hungry."
Dysnomia	When the inchling marshalls her magic, Mia grinned. An operation successfully navigated through, with all its pits and pratfalls. "...Well done. Let's get all of this out of here." Sukuna doesn't say out loud that it won't last forever, or that they'll need to be plugged in. Nevertheless, Dysnoma is pulling something glowing and chrome out from a distorted fold in space, strapping it to the incubators and plugging all the various cords in as it 'walks.' When Dysnomia steps outside, her eyes find Rita, then the manager, then turn back to the goatel fog uncurled around her, filling the air with an odd mist. They grab hold of the handles of the doors before security try to push them open--as ethereal as they seemed, it would have been easier to smash the door itself apart to get through. With what's going on by the goats, Dysnomia doesn't feel like she needs to add any spikes to their fear. But if security does still come to the door, a thought unspooled across their mind. "I wouldn't, if I were you..." It was soft, the way silk laid over the edge of a knife was soft."This is a private conversation. You understand. Don't you?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	The manager cries out, but in a way that shows he knows security wouldn't get here in time to save him if he fought. It's a little pathetic. "She wasn't- We were- Please, she's only a few weeks old, we're still housetraining her. You- you wouldn't leave a baby alone outside, would you?" Clover cuts in. "Not your baby. I am a goat." "We were- she needs to learn how to be a person. We wanted Johann to have a family, it'd be great for the hotel, but we promised we wouldn't bring anyone else from his homeworld... please, this was the only way we knew!" "Goat is family. Not Jo-hann," Clover says, pointing again to the barn. The manager's eyes are fixed on Rita, pleadingly. "We had to save the Goatel... people's jobs were at stake... please, we were going to give her a real bed soon, when she stopped eating the mattresses..." Shinmyoumaru and Dysnomia find a freight exit out the back of the building and lead the incubators around to the parking lot. The manager casts a frenzied, terrified glance in their direction. "W-wait, you can't- those are children! You can't steal children, they need to be with their family!" He looks again at Rita. "Please, why are you doing this? We invested so much in that equipment, in those children!" As Ozhira 'melts' he screams, properly this time, and Clover jumps back with a surprised goat sound. Madeleine steps forward. "We're from the Concord, the multiverse collective your world's government joined. We have authority over interplanetary commerce and scientific exchange, and we're here to confiscate your unauthorized purchases. Johann is here of his own free will, and you don't seem to be mistreating him, so we're letting him stay. But this cloning business isn't okay. We'll be keeping an eye on you." "The- yeah, I remember reading about that... I guess you've given me reason enough to take you seriously," he says, shuddering in Rita's grasp. "C-could you please tell your monster to put me down? And not into your other monster," he says with a glance down to Ozhira. Meanwhile, security is rattling the doors, trying to push their way out of the building - but they're no match for Mia's strength.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru did indicate things probably wouldn't last forever, but she can definitely keep everything going long enough to get out of here - even if she is going to be stuck with that magic circle for a while. She slows down so that Dysnomia can plug what she needs to in and then starts to move, more than a little smug about having gotten things going. She's helping! Well, maybe she's allowed, this once. "They're not with a family now!" Shinmyoumaru points out, to the manager. "They're just in tubes. Anyway, I don't trust you. You can't make someone get married and you can't keep people locked up so they can't get out! Do you know what it's like to be trapped somewhere?" Shinmyoumaru bristles. "You didn't even let her have a bed! You're treating them like - like tools, like things, and I'm not going to let you do that." Shinmyoumaru keeps escorting the pods. She trusts the others to handle the manager. Well, she trusts Rita, she's not sure Ozhira isn't going to eat him. But she absolutely cannot stop herself from turning around, walking several steps backwards, and making a rude face... she goes full akanbe, at least for a moment, before whirling back around so she doesn't trip over something.
Rita Ma	"If you could afford that equipment, the hotel had lots of money, right? If they need family so much, you'd have told Johann, right? If you weren't doing wrong, you'd let him know about the cloning, right? I'm sorry. I still don't understand--" Ozhira's transformation distracts her only moderately, with what she's seen so far. It's Clover's surprised goat sound that makes Rita flinch. She touches the woman's shoulder (with her hand) reassuringly. "Go to the barn, okay, Clover?" She points. Her tone's completely different; almost guilty. Her grip on the manager slackens, which should be comforting if not for Ozhira. "Go be with goats. It's okay. Please be happy." "C-could you please tell your monster to put me down?" The slackening lasts for only a moment. Rita doesn't stake her pride on every interaction with a stranger, but that's uncomfortably informative of the type of person the hotel's manager is. "Hi." A sharp-pointed tentacle grazes the manager's cheek and forces him to turn his face to her. "I'm sorry, I've been impolite. My name is Rita Ma. I'm not with the Concord. I'm deciding if I'm going to kill you today. Please look at me when we're speaking, okay?" She loosens a little too much. The manager drops an inch towards Ozhira, while Rita taps her cheek in affectedly-absentminded thought. "... I think I know. Mr. Johann was nice. Please gift the hotel to him. You have a week to. I've been talking to your workers; I'll know if you did. Okay?" A tentacle, drifting in front of Rita's face from the manager's perspective, shimmers to imitate a half-dozen employees' faces over hers in succession. The message is clear. Rita sets them down beside Ozhira with a dissonant gentleness, and then folds her hands behind her back and smiles- tired, so it must be sincere- at Maddie. "I think we should take Clover and a couple of goats, Ms. Madeleine. Please ask Mr. Johann, but I don't think he'll be comfortable having her around."
Ozhira	Ozhira waits beneath the manager, tugging at his legs but overall just being a good little* terrorbeast while he and Rita and Madeleine have their conversation. They are here to be Leverage, not to be the Negotiator, after all. > "And not into your other monster?" Rita's grip on him slackens. Ozhira takes this as a signal and pulls harder in turn-- not enough to yank him out of her grip, but enough to escalate the threat. Escalating it more is when that colossal set of jaws snap shut-- and then another set snap shut over the first, from a different set of sides. The maw yawns open once more, insistent and hungry. Rita sets the manager down on safe asphalt. Without skipping a beat, Ozhira's great maw closes and the beast rises up out of themself, assuming their usual human disguise. There is absolutely no sign on the ground that anything had taken place, there. "Please," They raise their voice a bit towards Rita, "Apologize to her, for us. We did not mean to, scare her." Their head swings towards the manager in a way that is slightly too much for a human neck to be able to do. "Only him." They visibly deflate, but more in the way someone who's had a long day deflates rather than the more literal way Ozhira is certainly capable of doing. The baggy black marks under their eyes look entirely proper to their expression, "We are, tired. We are going back. To the room. Everything should be, okay now?"
Dysnomia	It's only when the manager lies crumpled on the grass that the fog begins to recede--but not enough to let security out, unless, ironically, they stop trying to break through. She considers walking up and trying to join in the bluster...But really, what would be the point? The man had already looked into the face of death, and she had given him a path to navigate that let him live. He'd never appreciate it, would he. The self-control it took Rita, to keep from drinking him down to his marrow. It was terrifying. It was amazing. "...Bet you've worked up an appetite." Dysnomia said, gingerly, falling in line next to Rita. "I can get your cooler for you, if you'd like."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"Go be with goats. It's okay. Please be happy." "Goats," Clover repeats, and walks over to the barn. Previously the three goats who were awake had gathered at the far corner of the pen, instinctively frightened by Ozhira's and Rita's transformations. As Clover walks into the pen, the goats visibly calm in her presence, and she gently lays her hands on them, petting and embracing the animals. "Hi." The manager emits a low moan of terror. "Mr. Johann was nice. Please gift the hotel to him. You have a week to. I've been talking to your workers; I'll know if you did. Okay?" "I-I'll do it. Please, just don't hurt me! It's his." - The next day is a flurry of activity. Johann, as predicted, is indeed uncomfortable with the idea of living with his clones, but his eyes shine at the prospect of owning the Goatel itself. He's even willing to let Clover take her three favorite goats with her when she leaves. By the time Rita's closing the door to Johann's room, he's already contemplating aloud what he'll do with the newly vacated laboratory wing. After a short trip to rent a trailer suitable for hauling goats (and the incubators), the crew of elites set out for Madison with Clover and company in tow. "So I guess this wasn't MCRD business after all," Madeleine comments, "but I reckon I can bother a relocation specialist for help finding a place where Clover won't be used as a theme attraction. Or put in a lab, for that matter." Another stop at Culver's for lunch. The hills and forests pass by and by, but they don't feel so empty anymore. Goat hotels, floating islands, there really is something to find anywhere you choose to look.