[IC] MASKS - Ghost Gate City

[Thanqol]

"Ow ow ow ow ow!" Hsien is not proud of how quickly and instinctively she turns on the waterworks in this situation. "You're hurting me! It's too tight! I can't breathe~!"

To be sure, some or all of those things were working out to be true, but she's only realizing that after she has given her biggest, watering, teary eyed begging for mercy. It's not her fault, it's an instinct. When she was part of Lady Foxfire she'd once done it accidentally when receiving a too firm handshake. Suffice to say America had been a bust.

Hot Take: Handshakes are like bondage for the wrists

"Pleaaaaase let me go," she begged shamelessly. Mentally she'd moved on to orienting herself in the situation, calculating escape routes and repressing the trauma of how scary Foxfire was when she was angry, the pathetic whimpers were continuing more or less on instinct while she tried to work out if they were bourgeois or not. "I promise I'll be a good girl and never do it again~"

[Balmas]

No more shop? No more Izi, grunting tersely into the mike? No Mr. Chan in the background, an omnipresent smell of coffee-two-creams?

No, no. Unforgivable. Not happening. Not here, not on her watch, not now not ever. This is gonna be the best explanation, just as soon as she can figure out how to--

"It's like, you reach inside yourself, and pluck that little string at the center, right?"

Right. Uh. Human, meet lion.

Fwoosh. Mouse. Fwoosh. Cat. Fwoosh. Back to lion puppy.

"All celestial lions can do it? I don't know whether humans can or not, because it's like, there's all this art of people turning into things? And not a lot of people actually doing it out on the street? And I don't know whether it's like heaven, where it's like, oh, no, this inborn power which is super awesome and feels good to use and feels bad to not use is suddenly a bad thing to use? Or like, you know, impolite?

"… Mr. Chan, can humans transform? Because I know one who can turn into fire and one who can walk through walls, and nobody tells me what people can and can't do.

"And it's like, I'm trying to get back to heaven? Because it's home, right? It's where my parents live? It's got the best peaches--we do those, you know, point of personal family pride, the peaches, those are ours--and it's like, down here is full of ghosts now? And heaven is full of sages who--there's this one who lives in a waterfall, right, and you'd think that she'd be all about meditation and mastering the flesh through tribulation, but no, she actually just really likes the place, and she's okay with splashing if nobody notices and--"

Suddenly, she really misses home? Like, yeah, it can suck sometimes, but also she knew what was going on over there, and what the rules were, and whether people could actually do the things in that transformation art she keeps seeing, and could… Well, could know how to do things?

"And it would be really, really great if you didn't get me in trouble, okay? This world is super cool and heaven is super cool, and I wanna go home, but I need to find my parents first, and that's gonna get super hard if the people with the ghosts find me, okay?"

[Tatterdemalion]

Hsien!

"Ma'am, don't worry! Help is on the way! Unidentified Anomalous Creature, you have five seconds to remove yourself from the civilian or we will exercise lethal force!"

So the good news is that it's just two of the idiot HOUND soldier cosplayers, presumably drawn over by the sound of a damsel in great distress. The bad news is that they're pointing guns at the wombat, which is refusing to shift itself from taking a nap(?) directly on top of you. Having something directly on top of you being shot at sounds like a great way to accidentally get shot yourself, and also, won't these dinguses (in big, face-concealing helmets) try to arrest you once they realize exactly who you are? You're lucky that a headless wombat is just such a great distraction...

---

Shifu!

Izi gives you a long, lingering, impossible-to-read look before sighing and deleting the picture off her phone. "Well, I did promise."

"For the record," Chan butts in, "we can't transform. Except by transforming into old people with back problems, one day at a time."

"Now, what was that about needing to find your parents? Because I can set something up," Izi continues. "Set the group chat on it. Are they somewhere in the city? Do you even know? What do they look like? Can they look like anything, because they're shapeshifters? That would be really tough..."

[Thanqol]

Ever hear of Stockhome Syndrome? Hsien has, worldly tumblr girl that she is. She read a post somewhere that explained that the entire concept was fabricated by some reporter looking to spice up an already spicy hostage situation, creating a scandalous popular myth that persisted in popular psychology for centuries.

The truth was that Enmark was just fucking terrified by a bunch of incompetent police with assault rifles who seemed determined to kill all the civilians in the crossfire and so took on hostage negotiation duties out of basic self preservation. That part didn't get as much traction in the corporate press for reasons of class interest and improper virtue.

"It's a plush toy!" Hsien said, already in the flow of fox lies. The questionable morality of resorting to lies on instinct was softened a lot by the fact that she was lying to the police, which Kant had probably said was a categorical imperative. She'd look it up later. "Oh please officers! My girlfriend won me this comically oversized plushie at the arcade and my dainty arms are too weak to carry it on my own and I have collapsed under the weight! If only there were some heroic agents of justice that could rescue me~"

[Not From Around Here: 12+3 15, creating an opportunity]

[Balmas]

Oh. Uh.

"I think they are? But I'm not actually sure? There was a lot of shouting happening at the time, right? And I was with this mean woman, who looks a lot like Hsien, but with more tails? I've seen her on the wanted posters. I think she's her mom? And then I kinda fell through a portal, and Mr. Chan found me!

"They'd look like me! And one of them would have a ball! Unless…"

She can think of a lot of small things she can turn into, right? Like mice, or squirrels, or if you wanna be gross about it, something like a flea? Could she manage a flea?

And then once she's small, it's like. You can always go smaller, but you need space if you wanna go bigger, so if you're small and someone's fast, they could just, like, toss a cup over the top of you, slip some paper over the bottom, and you're stuck in there until you can lift the cup! Which is not an easy thing when the cup is bigger than you!

And that's not even thinking about like, what if they turned into trees? She could walk past them in the park, and she wouldn't notice!

Well, she. She'd probably notice, because then they'd turn back into lions, and she'd get cuddles. Unless she got scolding! Or maybe, cuddles and then scolding and cuddles again? That doesn't sound too bad, but it'd be nicer to just get cuddles and then more cuddles.

"They'd be animals," she decides. "And probably the mean lady would wanna put collars on them, since that keeps them from transforming because I don't know why. And there'd be two of them, probably, and she wouldn't wanna let them get too far out of her sight.

"I think. I know it's not a lot but…"

Wow, it really isn't a lot. Not in a city this size. They could be in the next apartment over--you know, the one over the place that makes all the nice-smelling dumplings?--and she wouldn't even know it.

"Do you think… I'm realizing now it's gonna be super hard to find them. D'you think, maybe, if we showed me off, it'd trick the mean lady into coming to try and find me? So we can chase her back and find my parents?"