[IC] Cosplay Conversion [continued]

[Kaga]

Hope flared up inside Daniel as Lily's eyes opened, but fear and worry consumed him again when the girl shoved her father away and ran off. Was Lily gone for good? Did he just destroy any chance they had of getting her back?

Thankfully, an immense sense of relief washed over him when Lily ran back. She was herself again. She recognized her father. And best of all, she was alive. Daniel collapsed to his knees, too overcome to even stand. "You're... you're ok." he gasped, then on the verge of crying tears of joy. "I'm so, so glad you're ok..."

---

"Well... Kate replied quietly, her hand nervously running over one of the weapons while she struggled to think of how to explain the situation. "In Soul Eater - um, the anime my character's from - people - or at least, certain people - have the ability to transform into weapons. And those weapons team up with meisters - like my character - who can wield them." she managed to say. "N-no one I knew wanted to cosplay as Liz or Patty - my character's partners - in their human forms, so, I brought them as accessories instead..."

[Neobullseye]

((I... don't really have any idea what to do with Lily/Jonathan in this specific moment. Sorry about that >_>. Just assume that they're too focused on each other to notice Daniel's reaction, okay?))

<Simon>

Ah, okay, that made sense. Sort of. At least compared to everything else that happened today. Of course, by that standard, most of the conspiracy shit Simon had read on the internet also made sense, but still...
"I see. So, do they have a will of their own in weapon form too? I mean, you sort of said that not everybody can wield them, right? That sort of implies that the weapons get to choose who may wield them and who may not, much like legendary weapons in lots of other different stories. Anyways, if that's the case, just warn us when you start to hear voices telling you to kill people, okay? I'd sort of like to know things like that in advance."
With that, Simon looked around. Apparntly everything had calmed down a bit from the immediate crisis situation it was in just minutes ago. Maybe now they could make some new plans?
"So... does anyone have any idea about what to do next?," Simon asked the group. "Because I don't, at least not anything beyond 'Find a way to get past that maze-thing, then find out what they're hiding in there'."

[Kaga]

Kate nodded, acknowledging that she’d speak up if Liz and Patty started to come to life. Of course, if that happened, she probably wouldn’t need to tell anyone. Simon and the others would probably get the hint when two unfamiliar women started interrogating her about what she’d done with the real Death the Kid…

Trying to distract herself, Kate looked towards the trio on the floor – with the little girl finally returning to her normal self (well… you know) and the two men bawling over just how relieved they were to have her back. Thankfully, Kate wasn’t seeing any souls like last time…

“Well… Somehow I doubt relying on the Doctor to snap our brains back in place whenever we start to lose it is a good idea.” Kate spoke up in response to Simon’s other question. “What other information about all this have you guys gathered? Where were you going to go from here?” She had assumed that this other group had started to form some sort of plan, but maybe she’d assumed too much…

[Neobullseye]

<Simon>

Simon shrugged. "Short version? Very little. We know that this place -- or rather, the convo that was held here yesterday -- is the only thing each one of us had in common, which is why we're looking into what's going on in here in the first place. As you might have noticed, there seems to be some kind of reality-warping thing going on down there," Simion answered, gesturing at the door leading down to the hallway. "No matter which door you take, you always end up at the same hallway. We -- that is, Daniel and I -- are assuming that you have to either go through the doors in a certain order, or that there's some other kind of secret to it. Either way, simply trying at random won't get us anywhere, which is why we went back up to go look somewhere else. The problem is what said 'somewhere' is going to be." He fell silent for a second, an idea forming in his head. "Wait a minute... Does anyone know who was responsible for this event in the first place? Some kind of festival commitee, the principal, whoever? And, more importantly, where would this person or group's private office be? Maybe we can find out some clues there..."

---

<Jonathan>

Jonathan's circle of reality was slowly expanding from the one metre radius around himself and his daughter to include the people around him, especially the Doctor. He turned his head towards him. "I... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled at you like that. Thank you so much..."
He then turned towards Simon, having caught the last bit of his conversation with an unknown girl. "I'm not sure. I think it was an outside event for the most part, but even then there has to be some kind of internal organisation behind it. The principal's office should be on the top floor, if I recall correctly; if nothing else, we could find out out who was organizing this to begin with. Anyone against?"

During this entire time, he never released Lily, nor did the latter let go of him.

[Kaga]

“That would explain a lot…” Kate mumbled after Simon explained his experiences in the nearby hallways. Unfortunately, she had no idea what part of the school could be responsible for all the strange occurrences. She felt a bit bad about expecting Simon to have any leads when she herself was completely clueless.

At that time, Daniel, too, wiped the tears from his eyes, recollected himself and nodded in acknowledgement of Jonathan’s apology, mumbling what sounded like an exasperated “S’alright” as he pulled himself to his feet. Once the hysteria from the recent incident died down and Daniel could re-focus on reality, he also joined in on Simon and Kate’s conversation. “Well…” he spoke up. “As much as reality-warping hallways would ordinarily be a giant red flag that says we should probably do some investigating, we’ve already established that we have no idea how to proceed, so we’ll have to look elsewhere.” He started to explain, pacing around a bit with his British accent still slightly present. “That said, it would seem that the only real option would be to go after whichever next person or group seems the most likely to be involved here, see what information we can gather, and move on from there until we can figure out how to follow those three shady characters into wherever they hid themselves in there.” He continued, pointing at the nearby building. “Which… also sounds a bit like a video game. Kind of ridiculous, but we’ll take all the hints we can get. So following that logic it would make sense to say that if we can’t go down one path yet, it’s because there’s a quest we haven’t completed and consequently important information we haven’t found yet, etc etc, in which case we’ll just have to work with what we do know to figure out the next best path to go down, until that other path is available. And if the principal’s office is the only important location we currently know how to get to, then I say, yes, we’ll start there.” He agreed once he finished rambling. “If that fails and we reach a dead end, we could try looking through everything we got from Brokkon to see if there are any hints there – check for flags we missed, so to speak…” he continued, before his eyes landed on Kate again. Sure, he’d half-acknowledged her earlier, but his mind was in so many different places he didn’t think much of it. After blinking a few times to ensure she was really there and he hadn’t fallen to a new level of insane, he turned to Simon. “When did she get here?”

[Neobullseye]

"Well, it's decided then," Simon said, wisely deciding to not react too much to Daniel's somewhat bizarre train of thought. "Jonathan, you know the way around here, right? So could you lead the way?"
"To an extend, yes," Jonathan answered. "I don't know where everything is, though. The only reason that I even know about the principal's office's location is because it's common knowledge."
"Well, that's the important part anyway," Simon shrugged. Not that he knew about this so-called 'common knowledge', but hey. "Like I said though, can you lead the way? As in now?"
"Oh! Yeah, sure..." Wait... did he just get told what to do by someone not even half his age? Heck, the guy looked to be no older than 14 or something. Well, whatever. "Let's go then..." Jonathan mumbled, walking off holding Lily's hand in his. The girl, although obviously still nervous and a bit out of it due to everything that had happened, just let her father take her along.

This problem solved, Simon turned to Daniel to answer his question. "What, you mean skull girl? Her name's Kate; she ran out of the building while you were trying to help that little girl. I don't know how long she's been in there, though. With how that stupid place breaking all laws of physics, she could've been there since the beginning of time without anyone ever noticing her. You should probably ask her yourself for more information."

[Kaga]

Daniel allowed Jonathan to lead the group towards the principal’s office, hoping to use the travel time as an opportunity to get acquainted with Kate. Unfortunately, the words he’d exchanged with her didn’t seem to help very much. Being as unfamiliar with her canon as Simon and Jonathan were, all he really learned about the high-strung girl was that the transformation seemed to be causing her as much anxiety as it caused him, if not more – also she referred to her weapons as if they were sentient beings and seemed as if she were suppressing some sort of powerful violent urge whenever she saw a crack in the pavement. Mildly concerning. Daniel distanced himself awkwardly for the latter half of the walk.

He spoke up as they approached the building, “So, where exactly do we go from here?” he asked. “Bear in mind that locks shouldn’t be an obstacle.” He added, twirling his screwdriver around between his fingers.

---

Ordinarily, Kate wouldn’t try so hard to be antisocial, but on the walk over, she could hardly pull her eyes off the ground in front of her. The problem was the taller man trying to make conversation with her. Not that there was anything wrong with what he said, but every time she tried to look up at him, her gaze drifted towards the back of his head, where his unsightly hairline consisted of an ugly mix of dark brown and something much lighter, like ginger or something. She figured he’s been wearing a wig yesterday that didn’t fit perfectly, leaving the tiniest sliver of his real hair exposed. And as a result, that tiny bit of exposed hair didn’t change overnight with the rest of it, leaving it to change slowly and unevenly as a gruesome battle broke out between dark and light… she didn’t want to think about it. Unfortunately, the ground beneath her didn’t serve as a very good distraction, since every unsightly imperfection in the concrete made her want to tear it all up from the ground, smooth over the earth underneath with her own hands, and start over.

Hardly able to focus on where she was walking, she bumped into Simon, and mumbled an apology as she re-focused her attention on the path in front of her. Looking up at the building ahead, she dreaded every possible scenario that could arise to set Kid’s brain off. “I sure hope everything in there is really well-organized…” she whispered.