IC CONTACT @ ryslig

[cawnviction]

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[anti_nonsense]

[Despite the office being equipped with a desk and chair, Rita sits on the floor with several documents surrounding her, as well as her RSDOS device sitting open. She doesn't look too worse for wear, though her usual tunic has been replaced with a simple skirt and blouse with a lab coat over it.

When Crow enters, she glances up from her work.] You're here already? I didn't think you were coming until... [She looks to a clock hanging on the wall, and realizes it is, in fact, past three.] ... Oh.

[She rises to her feet, brushing some of the creases out of her clothes.] I guess I can show you those results, then.

[cawnviction]

[Crow's already familiar with that kind of scene, so he isn't terribly surprised. Apparently scattering papers everywhere and practically nesting in them is a thing common to all nerds. Sometimes it's hard to resist the urge to clean up after them.

His human mouth turns up into an amused smile, but Crow chooses comment on the mess this time.]

Yeah. Though... [Crow shoves his hands into his pockets.] I guess there wasn't anything interesting in them.

[Because he suspects she'd be more excited about it if there was.]

[anti_nonsense]

[There's a pause, and Rita nods. It was probably obvious from her demeanor. Still, she walks over to her desk, picks up a sheet of paper, and hands it to him.]

These are the detailed results, but the short of it is: you're normal - at least, for a monster. You should probably take that as good news, especially if the symptoms are gone.

[cawnviction]

[He takes the offered sheet of paper. Honestly, most of his results look like gibberish to Crow. He's hardly educated, especially in the medical field, so he's not terribly surprised when he glances at the page and doesn't understand what almost all the words mean.

The spirals had disappeared early in the year, and with them, the awful itchiness. No more urges to scratch his butt all the time, ugh. His human mouth twists into a wry grin.]

I hope you're right. Got a bit worried when someone mentioned the symbols could mean evolution. [Crow gestures vaguely as he speaks.] Didn't really want to grow an extra head or something, you know?

[But on to the main reason he's here. Crow keeps his results in one hand.]

Anyway, your notes on this place?

[anti_nonsense]

[Rita glances around the office. There are folders, notebooks, and documents lying on just about every surface. Those among them that were written by hand appear mostly illegible; Rita doesn't exactly have neat handwriting. Looking back to Crow, she shrugs.]

I've been taking a lot of notes. Anything in particular you want to know about?

[cawnviction]

[Yeah okay, ask a nerd for everything and get a library. He really should've known better. Where to begin?]

Honestly, I just want to get me and my friend home without the monster hunger. [Crow folds his arms.] The gods started this so that's what I'm most interested in. Besides, someone I know is about to do something really stupid. Said he wanted to look for the Fog God's heart.

[Which in itself isn't stupid, but joining her side is.]

Rather not have the idiot get himself in deeper than he can handle.

[anti_nonsense]

[An uneasy look crosses Rita's face.]

'Something stupid', like... joining her?

[Because Rita knows a few idiots who've tried, or considered it, despite having good reason not to.]

[cawnviction]

[Crow lets out an irritated sigh. He's glad Rita sounds like she sees things his way.]

Right?

[He gestures fiercely with his hands, movements sharp and abrupt.]

How can anyone think that's the best option around?

[anti_nonsense]

[Brow furrowed, Rita opens a notepad, flipping until she finds the desired page.]

"The fog god is a heartless bastard, but it might hide it inside of one of its followers."

Tikbalang said something like that once, when asked about the heart. Apparently, some people think it's been hidden somewhere only a follower can reach. But...

[She glances away.] If you take it literally, it could also mean something like... the only way to kill the fog god is to kill her followers.

[cawnviction]

[Crow lets out a long breath of air, tail lashing behind him once. He can see how people could draw that conclusion. But most can't tell who's a Fog Follower and everyone just revives with the fog... Crow wouldn't put it past someone to attempt to kill all monsters -- not just Fog Followers -- within one of the non-Fog days. Maybe that's what the weird attacks intend to lead to.]

I guess not many people know about this.

[With all those "it"s, this stinks of something worded vaguely enough for people to make assumptions. Crow folds his arms.]

How did people find out about the heart? From the horseman, too?

[anti_nonsense]

[Rita nods.] I haven't told many people. If this were widely known, someone might go ahead and try killing all the god followers. [In fact, someone already did try - and it wasn't even someone who had this clue, to Rita's knowledge. How many more people would have joined in if they had reason to think it could work?]

And... yeah, it was probably Tikbalang. He's about the only one who seems to know anything about the gods. I mean... besides Dr. Liewen, but he isn't exactly around anymore.

[cawnviction]

Or all of us, if they can't tell who's a follower or not.

[Okay there's a lot to pursue here. Where to begin... Crow shelves the question about who was the one who got that original information; it sounds like it hadn't been Rita who got this. Crow ideally wants to get his information straight from the horse's mouth, as such.]

Dead, I'm guessing. I haven't heard of this guy, other than his name being...

[Crow makes a sweeping gesture at the entire office. The name of this lab.]

[anti_nonsense]

Missing, officially. I don't know if he's alive anymore... if that can even be called 'living'. [Her expression darkens a bit.]

If you don't know who he is, now's a good time to learn. He's the fourth god's father.

[cawnviction]

[O...kay... sounds like there's a story, there. Not really dead but not really alive either? Duly noted as a question for later.]

Does that make Liewen a god as well?

[anti_nonsense]

No... he's human. And so was his son, Elias Liewen... or at least, he lived as one up until about sixteen years ago, when he disappeared. That was when the 'fourth god' first appeared in this world.

[She opens a drawer in her desk and shuffles some papers around before producing a folder, which she hands to Crow.]

This is all the information I was able to find on Elias by snooping around in Liewen's records. They're copies, so you can keep them if you like.

[The first is a newspaper clipping, dated sixteen years ago, describing the disappearance of a young boy whose strange powers had been terrorizing his neighborhood in Bavan. The only things he left behind were a hole running deep into the ground, and a man, one of Dr. Liewen's assistants, completely embedded in his apartment wall, save for his legs dangling out. In the article, the boy's name is scratched out.

The other document is a missing person file, which appears to have been taken from Vandare's police records. The file's date matches the date of the previous article. It describes Elias Liewen, age 12 at the time of his disappearance. There's a warning to approach with caution, as the missing subject is extremely dangerous and believed to have killed several people.]

Unfortunately, this is all there is. Liewen made a serious effort to cover up everything related to his son, to the point that nobody around him even knew he had one.

[cawnviction]

[Crow takes the documents, the ridges over his eyes pinching as he reads. Newspaper reports aren't exactly the best of accounts but that and the missing persons file is all they have. Crow purses his lips and turns his attention back to Rita.]

So we're dealing with a twelve year old kid who became a god?

[Do gods even age? The fact the Fourth God had been a kid earns a wince of sympathy. He'd be cut if one of his own kids had ended up like this.]

Do you have anything on how that happened?

[anti_nonsense]

A kid... I guess so. I don't think he looks much like one anymore, though. [Not that she can say so with much confidence. Rita's not sure what he looks like these days.]

I don't know how it happened, but I have some thoughts on the matter. Tikbalang once said something like... when the fourth god was born, he obtained half of the fog god's power. That's how he became a god.

But it's not like that can just happen by accident, right? So the actual incident... I think it might have been Liewen's doing. Liewen knew more about the fog god than most people. What if he developed a way to siphon her power and place it into a vessel? With that 'vessel' being his own son...

[cawnviction]

[Yeah, he'd been thinking along similar lines the moment Rita had said the Fourth God had been born with the power. Not that he really has much experience with magic, but it'd be strange for the powers that had always been there to suddenly go out of control when the kid's twelve, wouldn't it? Or maybe it had been there dormant, but something must've triggered it, right?

Crow swears, the hand not holding on to papers balling into a fist.]

If that's true... It'd neatly explain why he covered up information around his son. [Crow shakes his head.] If he wasn't missing, I'd punch him myself. Who does that to a kid? To their own son?

[Crow's tail lashes furiously behind him before he runs a hand through his hair, trying to calm down without resorting to his usual method of punching something really hard; he gets the feeling Rita wouldn't appreciate it.]

So why isn't the guy here any more? You make it sound like you know where he is. He's not dead, is he? At least, not the way people are normally dead.

[That, at least, he has experience in.]

[anti_nonsense]

[One of her office walls actually has a fist-sized hole in it, and no, Rita didn't appreciate that one, either.

But Crow's question is a difficult one to answer, and after a pause, Rita's gaze falls on the laptop she left sitting open on the floor.]

He's there. In the network.

His mind was linked and integrated into the RSDOS system. But the last time I heard from him, he was... unstable... [She's not sure how else to put it.] ...so it wouldn't be strange if he died or went mad since then.

[cawnviction]

[What.]

You're telling me the Fourth God's dad is now the internet?

[Crow runs a hand through his hair, incredulous. Good thing there's no porn on the network; it'd just feel really weird knowing there's some guy potentially watching him if there was.]

That's just his mind, right? So his body went missing when he was linked?

[anti_nonsense]

... Yeah. [It sounds a lot weirder to hear it put like that.]

He used the fourth god's power to build the network in the first place, and presumably kept Elias in a similar state: comatose in the real world, conscious only within the network. I don't know how their positions got switched around, exactly. Maybe it was revenge.

In any case, his body's nowhere to be found, so the fourth god probably moved it somewhere.

[cawnviction]

[Crow pinches the space between his eyes. So the body could be anywhere on the peninsula at the very least, if it's even reachable at all.]

Damn.

[And that's all he really has to say about that.]

So who was the person who found out about the Fog God's heart?

[anti_nonsense]

I don't know who learned of it originally. Most of my information about it came from a guy called Duke. And his information largely came from Tikbalang...

[She sighs.] Honestly, we can't even be sure the thing really exists.

[cawnviction]

[Crow runs a hand through his hair. Yeah. All they have ambiguous words to go off, nothing really concrete enough to come up with anything resembling a plan of action.]

Any way to get in touch with Duke?

[If the guy had a way of getting into Tikbalang's good books to get the horse's mouth flapping more...]

Or has he gone the way of Liewen, too?

[Missing, that is.]

[anti_nonsense]

Yeah... he's gone. [She glances away, not wanting to give away any indication of being upset about that. The guy was pretty annoying, but... still.]

I was there one time when he summoned the horse-freak. He gave him some booze, and that seemed to put him in a good mood. Or maybe he was in a good mood anyway, and it was all up to chance to begin with. [She scoffs.] Who the hell knows?