A) Thanks! It's supposed to evoke the same "heart on her sleeve" as my first idea, but with the addition of the poison warning, which I think is also fitting.
Do the patterns change with her mood? Because if so then it's very similar to what I was planning for Sidney.
Leo still didn’t know the guy all that well; they barely spoke to each other, even though they shared a room, so Leo couldn’t even say he felt particularly concerned about Donte’s condition beyond the level of basic human compassion. They weren’t friends, but there was no bad blood there either. The last he’d heard the guy was doing okay, but there was no word on when he’d be coming back and no one had bothered to explain what had even happened to him.
All anyone knew was that that Helena girl was involved somehow.
Normally, Leo wouldn’t want to get involved. It was none of his business and no harm… no lasting harm had been done, so he wasn’t going to harass the girl for now reason. But, well, he was curious what had happened. Donte was a big guy and while it wasn’t like Helena couldn’t have hurt him somehow he doubted that was what went down; especially since the teachers weren’t doing anything to punish her for hospitalising another student.
Whatever the situation or the reason, it probably wasn’t the case that Helena had straight out attacked Donte. So something else had happened instead, something the teachers weren’t telling them and also weren’t punishing Helena for.
And, you know, he’d just come around to the idea that weird, magic duel monster spirits existed…
Were they dangerous?
“Hey, er, Helena?” It wasn’t often that Leo got sheepish around people; even girls. But then, it also wasn’t often that he found himself approaching them out of the blue and asking awkward personal questions of people he barely knew. Well, he’d done it twice in as many days now, but still. “This might sound weird but, er… do you… see things? Like, I don’t know, do you ever talk to your cards?”
When Audrey grimaced and emptied out her pockets, Sidney grimaced with her in sympathy. It was never a good feeling to be low on cash, especially when the festival was happening and everyone around you was having fun and you just… couldn’t. “Oh, sure. No problem.”
Come to think of it, did she have any money on her? Leaving the house in a rush as she did, Sidney wasn’t actually sure if she’d remembered to bring any with her. She checked, patting down the sides of her jacket and reaching inside to where she usually kept that sort of thing; for a moment she was worried they would both have to hungry, which would be embarrassing, but luckily she was able to find a few bills in an inside pocket. “Yeah, okay, no problem. And you don’t to pay me back; just cover me the next time we go out, okay?” Not that there was much difference, but Sidney preferred to treat these things in a kind of ‘pay it forward’ way rather than hold people to a debt. It was less awkward that way; for herself as much as the other person.
Putting her hands in her pockets, Sidney picked a direction at random and began to walk, trusting Audrey to follow along. “And I’m picking where we eat. Did you see any good stalls? I only just got here; haven’t had a chance to look around.”
Fun fact I found out while writing my post. The "new phone, who dis" meme is apparently from way back in 2009, meaning it's almost as old as the characters we are writing.
Bilica squabble? Urgh, whatever Audrey was talking about Sidney was glad she arrived late enough to miss it; that was a silver lining even if she would have preferred not to lose track of time as she had. Of course her friend would find herself in the middle of it as well, but it sounded like things went well enough, this time.
“A dead tree? I don’t know…” It was sweet of Audrey to think of her and her art upon seeing something she thought was cool and Sidney was always happy to be given a fresh source of inspiration, but this one kind of missed the mark. A dead tree just made her think of rotting wood, little pill bugs crawling all over it and dark, shadowy vibes. The thought was enough to make her scrunch her nose up; maybe some other time she would have been into it, but that kind of scene was completely at odds with the kind of colourful stuff she wanted to draw right now.
Although… if mushrooms were starting to grow on it, then maybe it wasn’t as dreary as she was imagining; she didn’t know her way around the woods like Audrey did, but she was pretty sure some of those mushrooms could be pretty colourful. Her look turned thoughtful, and then she began to smile. She could just picture a bunch of brightly coloured fungus growing out of an old stump and a fallen log; a dull, grey under layer with a vibrant, psychedelic forest growing on top of it. Like something out of Alice in Wonderland. “Actually, yeah. Yeah! That sounds great. Thanks for telling me.”
Feeling her phone vibrate in her hand, she turned the screen over to see the return message from William. “Sorry, it’s William. Let me just text him back.” Really? ‘New phone’? That joke was so old.
”Nevermind. I found someone cooler to hang out with.”
Take that.
“So, do you want to get some food? I haven’t eaten all day.”
A butterfly suspended in mid-air. Its wings spread, caught frozen in between flaps, brightly coloured like a kaleidoscope. Greens and blues and pinks and yellows and violets and even more colours in between. Beneath it, a sea of wild flowers just as vibrant, just as colourful and the wings, identically so even, trapped in a moment where the breeze had pulled at them, bending their stems and bowing their heads. It was only this shift in the flowers that allowed the butterfly to be seen at all, the colours that matched and camouflaged the insect moved aside to reveal it in a moment of inconsistency.
Just a moment, and then it would be gone again.
A stylus swished across the screen of the tablet, adding a dark line at the edges of the butterfly’s wing. Then it was gone, erased, as Sidney chose a thinner brush and repeated the motion; she wanted the butterfly to be visible, but not too obvious. No thick outline dividing it from the surrounding flowers, she wanted the incongruent colours to be the first thing people noticed, then the outline second. Something like that anyway.
Finishing the line work on the edges, Sidney moved on to the inner wing. These lines would be even thinner, dividing the wings up into patterns, each little section like the petal of a flower. Draw a line, draw another, erase it, draw it again, draw another, erase the first line, draw, draw, erase, start again. She set the stylus down next to her and swiped a finger across the screen, sliding the drawing away so she could look at her reference images again; butterflies, flowers, stained glass windows. Flower petals were uniform in shape, but also overlapping, butterfly wings were made up of inconsistent shapes, but the overall pattern was symmetrical and stained glass windows were usually made up of more angular pieces, but the placement of colours was a lot more purposeful. Sidney wanted a little of each of those qualities really, but nothing she drew looked right to her.
She ran a hand through her hair, brushing back the bangs over the left side of her face and huffed out a breath. On her left forearm, she caught a glimpse of the thing that had gotten her stuck in this rut in the first place; a brightly coloured butterfly drawn in faded marker ink directly onto her skin. A moment of fancy had led to her doodling it on herself yesterday afternoon, in between helping her parents get stuff setup for the festival, and she’d been in the mood to draw something unbearably colourful ever since. Sidney had sat down this morning looking to do just that, hoping to spend a few hours getting the groundwork out of the way before going out to meet her friends only to get caught up in it and now she was almost done.
Emphasis on almost. Frustrating, but, as long as she could get this finished before the festival she… wait, when did it get so dark outside?
“Oh, shoot.”
Reaching for her phone, Sidney checked the time and jumped out of her seat. She rushed towards her closet, throwing the phone onto her bed and ignoring the missed calls and texts for now as she hurried to pick out something to wear.
----
By the time she made it to the festival grounds, Sidney definitely felt a little frazzled; she just hoped she didn’t look it as she tried to flatten her hair and brush down the creases in her hastily donned clothes. In her other hand she held her phone, trying to type out a text one handed to William to find out where he was. It had been ages since they’d hung out and she had wanted to catch up at the festival, until she nearly forgot and missed the whole thing.
”Hey, W, where are you?”
Send.
Putting her phone away, Sidney looked up just in time to avoid bumping into a familiar face. “Oh, Audrey. How’s it going?”
Leo shuffled his feet awkwardly. He was really starting to feel bad about asking all of this, given how real this conversation was getting; it was supposed to be about figuring out what a bunch of dumb kids were doing in the woods at night, not digging up a strangers’ bad memories.
Maybe that was the point, to throw him off track by making him uncomfortable so he’d stop digging deeper into… whatever was going on. He wasn’t so sure it was just a prank anymore, but he still wasn’t entirely sold on the idea of spirits being real; a little less of a sceptic than before, sure, but not willing to fully buy into it yet.
If it was just to get him to feel awkward, it was working. Leo decided to just drop this for now. If something like this happened again, he’d come looking for this girl and get some real answers from her, but for now… he’d just answer her question and leave.
“Short. Like, really short. Long dark hair, kind of purple tinted; it fell in front of her face, covered one eye, but that might just have been because of everything that happened.” That was really all he could remember. It was dark and he hadn’t been trying to remember what she’d looked like at the time. “She used some kind of snake deck. Oh, and she was limping when she left.”
✦ Age: 26 (plus 34 years post-death) ✦ Gender: Male ✦ Weapon: Claw Hammer – A simple workman’s tool with a broad, flat head on one side for hammering nails into wood and a hooked wedge on the other side for levering nails back out. The only thing noteworthy about its appearance is its pure matte black finish, but it is otherwise unremarkable. It does, however, have a power; like a regular hammer, it can be used to nail things down, though unlike a regular hammer it does not need any actual nails to do so. When the hammer strikes an object, if there is an suitable flat surface on the other side of the impact, the hammer can create a projection of a nail which will pin said object to said surface; though the nail has the appearance of piercing the object, it causes no actual harm to the object, aside from the fact it was struck by a hammer obviously. The larger the object the larger the nail required and the more energy required; the duration of the effect will also be shorter.
✦ Appearance: Ogawa is a rather unassuming individual, standing at 5’ 9” and having a fairly average build. His face is plain on inexpressive, his posture is slouched and almost lazy; even his chosen weapon as a Reaper is dull compared to most. The only thing that really makes him stand out from a crowd is the way he dresses; flashy, expensive looking suits, gold jewellery and watches, dress shoes shined to a reflective sheen. The same things he used to wear while he was alive, back when Japan’s bubble economy had yet to burst and reckless spending was at a high.
Ogawa raised the cigarette to his lips, taking a long drag and making the interviewer wait awkwardly until he was finished; intentionally so, if the deliberate eye contact was anything to go by. He exhaled, blowing a plume of smoke into the air above the table and watching as it slowly dispersed around the room. It was only the sense of anticipation between them, the feeling that an answer was coming, albeit slowly, that prevented the interviewer was asking again or moving to a different question. The pause felt thoughtful, rather than negligent.
“I don’t know.”
More silence followed and Ogawa took the time to take another drag, shorter this time, before stubbing out his cigarette in his ashtray. “Well, I have an idea. Bullet to the back of the head I assume.”
There was another pause, then the interviewer put pen to paper and the sound of the nib scratching across the notepad broke the quiet at last. “I was out on a job; nothing too serious, normal day-to-day stuff. Normal if you’re a Yakuza anyway. I had a couple of our guys with me, younger faces, practically kids, but I knew them; I’d worked with them before. Next thing I know I’m waking up here; just as sudden as that. Didn’t hear or feel a damn thing.”
Folding one leg over the other, Ogawa leaned back in his seat. “Pretty sure it was one of them; the guys with me I mean. It could have been someone else, another family or something. but we were in our own territory, weren’t on bad terms with any other groups beyond the usual and I didn’t see anyone coming; trust me, I’m pretty vigilant about that sort of thing.” The Yakuza-turned-reaper let out a sigh. “I would have seen an enemy coming. The fact that I didn’t probably means it was my own family that took me out and I don’t have any idea why. It also means they used some kid to do the hit, which pisses me off almost as much as the killing itself. Use a damn professional if you’re gonna take me out.”
The reaper let out a sigh, but it sounded more tired than angry; it was an old annoyance at this point.
“I guess that’s why I stuck around; wanting to find out why I was killed. That’s also why I became a Reaper as well; to have a better chance of finding answers, in between the work we do. Besides, being a Reaper isn’t that much different from being a Yakuza; you’ve just gotta follow orders and pay your respects up the ladder, and not worry about getting your hands dirty every now and then. It’s good work and I’d say I was good at that sort of thing but… you know.” Ogawa raised a hand to the side of his head and placed a finger against his temple to mime a gun, then rocked his head to the side as if mimicking being shot. “Had to have been a reason, right?”
✦ Magic Branch: Familiars – Ogawa’s magic is based around summoning temporary familiars in the form of animals to do his bidding. Using written spell talismans he is able to summon various animals to carry out his orders, usually scouting, but can also include tracking and fighting. In order to make the process of summoning smoother and more consistent, Ogawa has tattooed the forms of the animals he is able to summon onto his body; when he uses his magic the animals are created in the image of these tattoos, making them look more like living pieces of art than real creatures.
✦ Magic
✧ Tsubame: a swift flying bird, particularly useful as a scout due to the bird-eyes view it can get. Ogawa has a tattoo of a sparrow on the inside of his left forearm. ✧Kitsune: a cunning canine, able to track spirits using its sensitive nose. Ogawa has a tattoo of a fox on the outside of his left bicep, appearing to chase the sparrow down his arm. ✧Hebi: a serpent, able to sneak its way into places his other familiars cannot, but isn’t much use otherwise. Ogawa has a tattoo of a snake coiling around his right forearm. ✧ Tora: a powerful predator, it is the only familiar Ogawa is likely to call on in a fight. Ogawa has a large tattoo of a tiger covering most of his back.
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