The tiny girl gave a nod to Orion.
"Nice to know I'm not the only one worried about it...our group isn't the most...stable."
August headed up the stairs, tugging at her neon pink beanie with some apprehension. Her eyes settled on Daniel rooting around the garments. His last words echoed in the red head's mind as she quirked her lips, careful to not touch anything this time until she was ready.
"Awoken? You mean the kid may have been tied to all the spirit stuff, that's what got him noticed in the first place?"
It would make sense...maybe. She still barely understood anything from this world. Just that she was dabbling her toes in the shallow end. She decided to take a chance.
"Here's the weird part, okay? It wasn't...fear. He wasn't afraid, he was apprehensive. Nervous, like he wasn't totally sure he was in danger, or safe. That may have been the hypnotism, but if it wasn't suppressing everything, or when it wore off enough to make him nervous, wouldn't he be afraid?"
"Maybe he wasn't hypnotised to begin with," Daniel offered, "Lets look at our missing person. He was in the woods with a guitar so he must have been brooding, not suprising since not only was he a teenager, he was like us. So while playing his music out in the forest he attracts the attention of someone- something else. This kitsune does what kitsunes do and turns into an attractive form and starts chatting him up. Instead of trying to seduce him right away she must have figured out he was like us, either through her hypnosis not working or maybe by the flavor of his energy. Either way she instead starts chatting him up, tells him she understands, introduces him to this secret world of ours. Over weeks she gives him just enough to keep him ensnared, either exploiting his feeling of isolation from everyone else or the discovery of power, shows him what we can do like with the potions down stairs Kanoa mentioned. So he keeps going and going but soon realizes that she's possessive and doesn't want him to have any other friends or friends if you know what I mean." Running his hand through his hair Daniel frowned. "Or it could all be a load of bunk. Heck I'm basing this all on the idea that fox demons think like humans do. This is really just a shot in the dark for me."
August tapped her chin, circling the room as she listened, avoiding touching anything. While Daniel ruminated upon the means and methods of kitsune thought, Orion occupied himself with rummaging through the boxes of clothes, holding some up to his body. Unfortunately, he could not rock a yellow summer dress.
"So, you think that drugging and kidnapping someone out of jealousy constitutes normal, human thought patterns?" He arched an eyebrow at Dan.
"Partner abuse is extremely high," Replied Daniel ignoring the sarcasm. "While I don't want to get into the darker bits of it, One in two marriages in the U.S. end in divorce, be it financial, jealously, abuse or something else. About seventeen percent of marriages involve extra marital affairs, with nineteen percent being male and seventeen being women. Compounded with hookup culture portraying males as sexually promiscious beings by their very nature it's very easy for someone to think that. Especially when said person survives by seducing someone.
August kept silent, watching the two males jockey for dominance in the most passive aggressive argument she had ever seen. It was...amusing, adorable. Another circle of the room. She contemplated touching the clothing to get a feel, but opted against it. If the cabin didn't give her anything solid, the clothing was probably more likely to jar her again rather than assist.
"Huh..." Orion turned back to the facinating world of stolen clothing. "You're a real bummer, you know that?" Tossing down the cardigan he'd been holding he sauntered over to the bed, flopping down on it spreadeagle, his feet hanging over the sides.
"It's why I usually hang out on roof tops." Danny said with a shrug.
"Well, I don't know about your fine art of induction, Boy Wonder, but some of those cloths still have their tags on them, pretty sure we can figure out where they came from if we care too. Maybe our foxy lady friend is masquerading at the local Hobby Lobby." Orion returned the shrug.
"If either of us is the sidekick, it's you but that's beside the point. By cross-referencing the store tags to a map of the town, we should be able to find where this creature 'hunts.' While we won't be able to get security tapes from these stores with them often taping over themselves I'm sure Kanoa or August would be able to spot them in a crowd." replied Danny, rubbing his hands together in glee.
Orion inclined his head up to stare at Danny. He couldn't make up his mind if the kid was for real or not. It was like listening to a radio serial.
"Would you two prefer I leave the room so you can compare dick size now or later? I think that's enough Alpha hormones for one day boys, stay focused."
Danny blinked. Alpha hormones? Him? While it was true that Danny was constantly working out, that was more from his inability to stay still, not for asserting dominance, he considered himself a nerd, or at the very least an intellectual that waxed philosphically. For some reason he wanted to protest this, but knew that doing so would only prove her point. Damn.
Orion grinned at them, broad and white of color and intention, not even the barest hint of schadenfreude, advancing from the realm of disarming authenticity and into the lands of smarm with a puckish wink to the two. There seemed pattern forming in his life of people accusing him of posturing. He honestly couldn't fathom why.
The redhead thumped Orion on the chest as she walked by the bed, giving a frown at both of them. Boys...she wondered if this was how her brother acted when she wasn't around. The miniscule girl suddenly remembered why she had been in relationships with girls for the past 4 years now. Not that they were much better at times.
"I couldn't pick someone out of a crowd unless I touched them, so ignoring that we don't need to see where it hunts as we know where it's magical hidey hole is, we don't even know if it's aggressive. Also, where is it right now? I think we've dallied around enough as it is, we should probably head back downstairs. There's nothing really up here...the clothing idea isn't a bad idea, but how do we know it's not stolen from another kid that just hasn't been reported, or from another town? Who knows how far this thing roams, it could just be settling in here for a long haul or this could be a vacation home to it."
There was just so much testosterone in this room, she needed out. The two were sizing each other up like dogs who didn't want to fight or back down. Her eyes lingered on the stock of food for a moment, absent mindedly touching the bed as she did so. Her eyes fluttered for a moment, then her head snapped over to where Orion was laying. August suddenly shoved him from one side.
"Get up, he slept here! Move move move, I need a better contact!" With sisyphian effort she tried to thrust his limp, overly long mass off the bedding, Orion making no effort to help her endevour. Then her demand clicked in his head. Orion stopped grinning.
Rolling off the bed languidly, he straightened up and stared at August. The frown was back. She had struggled with a relatively new and unweathered instrument. Somehow he thought the bed where the boy may well have laid unconcious for hours or days wouldn't prove any easier. He pressed his lips into a line and folded his arms. He wouldn't ask her if she was certain that this was a good idea. None of this had been a good idea.
"Take care now, Batty. Just...um..." he shrugged his hunched shoulders. "Just remember where you are or who you are. Whatever it is that seems so easy to lose on your little spirit journeys."
August quirked her lips as she stared at the bed, not looking back up to Orion as she spoke.
"I don't lose anything, I'm not losing who I am, I'm just...changing it. I come out different every time. Where most people slowly change and evolve through their experiences over time, I get a data surge and just kind of wake up...altered. It's usually minor, nothing too big...food preferences, music tastes...I should be fine since I'm prepared. But uh..."
She looked up at the boys, sharp eyes betraying a glint of slight worry.
"Don't let me stay on there longer than a minute, right?"
Orion nodded and crouched at the edge of the bed, staring over the flat, linen plane.
August crawled onto the bed, already feeling the seeping emotions as she laid face up on it. She shut her eyes, focusing on the emotions. Instead of allowing them to slam into her, she rode through the feelings, letting them take her adrift as she felt her sense of self shift and ebb around the foreign emotions. Fear...she needed specifics. Calmness...too vague. Vague wasn't enough.
Give me a specific feeling dammit!
Unknown...mystery...why was she here...what did it want. It? Her? Him? It. A shadowy figure. August twitched as the emotions surged up in her again, eyes shut tightly as her fingers dug into the blankets, threatening to rip the fabric. Her legs writhed slightly, not pain, but discomfort. Let it hit...the redhead took a deep breath before tensing again as she melded with the emotions fully. Her bright green eyes snapped open, staring at the ceiling, but clearly not in the present.
What do you want from me...why me? I don't get it...
August's eyes fluttered for a moment before she bolted upright, sweating profusely.
"HE DIDN'T KNOW IT!"
The emotions were still embedded in her psyche as she threw herself off the bed and wobbled, suddenly latching onto Daniel for support and immediately leaping back like he was made of lava.
"NO NO, DON'T! Just! Stay away for a moment, shit!"
The redhead backed against the wall, eyes wide as she struggled to regain control for a moment. Panic, fear...not hers. His. Theirs. Ours. She rubbed her temples, looking like someone whose own brain was struggling to claw it's way out of her skull. Her speech was rapid and flustered, but alongside the fear, it seemed like...excitement?
"O-okay, kid didn't know the Kitsune at all, he was terrified of it, h-h-he had no idea why he was here, the fear is beyond primal, it's a completely foreign place to him and something he didn't understand. I-i-it kept him drugged, like REALLY drugged, like just WOW this was more intense than the hypnotism, he wasn't just suppressed, he was made like mentally handicapped by whatever was pumped into him, the amount of chemicals needed to suppress this much fear and anxiety would be ASTRONOMICAL or at least so potent as to potentially cause long term damage, this kid's neuron's would have been better off in a goddamn electric fence!"
The thrill of solving a problem had August in a rush, it seemed, but the kid's emotions were still clinging to her. She hated this place. This cabin was horrifying to her, it wasn't just the unnatural setting anymore, it was a prison, HER prison as far as she was concerned. Her empathy put her in the shoes of the missing boy, and all his trauma, fear, and sense of isolation was flooding her. She suddenly made a bolt for the stairs.
"Okay, okay, I don't think we should stay here anymore!"
Daniel held up his hands to the side and approached her slowly, keeping eye contact but made no move to touch her. "August. Look at me. We can talk about that later, for now just find your center," Danny said, stopping a few feet away from her. "We will leave as soon as possible, but you need to get your bearings. You're the oil, the memories are water. You may be close but you are seperate. Remember how you -not him- you came here. With us, your friends. Remember us meeting those times? When I was in my dad's police car when he found you messing with telephone lines? That's something that August does, not...him. Just take a breather, and we will walk out of here, and get this over with so you won't have to ever come back here. Sound good?" As Daniel searched her eyes looking for any indication she may end up hurting herself he realized just how lucky he was. To always risk losing yourself whenever you came into contact with others -or where others had been- it was no wonder she preferred the company of machines.
Orion prowled the edge of the room as Danny tried to talk August down. The dust in the room spiraled into fractal, mantras of some eldritch mean. Daniel's voice echoed off the shadowed recesses in the room in Orion's ears, with sinister, aneseptic tones. His hand gestures seemed obscene for some reason. Orion tried to keep his focus on August instead. No, his focus should have been on Daniel. The boy had excellent bedside manner. Maybe he'd be a therapist, hostage negotiator, or used mattress salesman one day. But he was talking to August like she had just experienced a car wreck or a personal tragedy. But that wasn't quite right. This wasn't shock. This was a bad trip.
Orion hissed through his teeth with mostly mock irritation. Striding purposefully over to his fellow forayers into the fantastic, Orion enfolded one of August's hands with his own, squeezing firmly and forcing her hand up between their faces as he stared at her headlong. He reached his other hand up to her shoulder and pressed his index finger into her shoulder, almost to the point of pain.
"This is where your median nerve starts." He spoke with deadly seriousness, as if the information he spoke was passed to him from smouldering shrubbery. Tracing a line down her arm he stopped and pressed his thumb and forefinger hard against a spot on the inside of her elbow. "This is where the Ulnar nerve starts." Moving his fingers further down, his touch became progressively softer until he opened her hand and splayed her palm upwards. "Between them, they provide all of the nervous innervation of the human hand." Orion kept his eyes locked hard on hers. "Everything of import that any human has ever done. Every work wrought by the hand of man has been varied out by tiny, little electro-chemical signals running through those points. Every painting. Every sculpture. Every letter or note put to page. From dissertations on Mitocondrial Symbiont Theory to masturbation, almost everything you or anyone else has ever done has been because of those two nerves." He gently closed her hand and wrapped his spidery fingers around it. "You have them. I have them. That boy you were mainlining probably still has them too." Orion straighted up from eye level. "Now calm your tits, Batty, and let's get out of this scene."
August fought the urge to claw Orion's eyes out, to yank her hand back and flee. Not from the emotions, not from the shock and residual, but from the fear that his touch would induce another wave of emotions and she'd change again. Daniel hadn't touched her, that was good...neither were doing much for her current situation but at least he didn't touch her. She gritted her teeth for a moment, instead trying to fathom why Orion was talking about her nerves. She opted instead to focus on his words...nervous innervation, nerves, electro-chemi-wait.
August's breathing slowed down, her brain seizing the reins from her emotions. Wiring. He was talking about human wiring. He was giving her mechanics to think about? Intentionally or not, he triggered her logic center, the part of August that never seemed to change regardless of who or what entered her mind. That irrepressible urge to tinker, to see the underlying mechanics and streamline. The redhead took another breath, then slowly, methodically reached up and placed one finger on Orion's chest.
"...next time I yell don't touch me, please don't just touch me. Thank you for helping me focus. I appreciate it, but just...mmm...thank you."
Her hands slipped into her pockets as she looked up at him, all five feet of her fearless. She looked at Daniel.
"I'm okay now. Thanks for trying to calm me down during...that. Let's go, I'm over this place."
With that, the redhead spun on one foot and tromped down the stairs, coming to a halt as Jackson finished his questions to Kanoa. August put one hand on her hip, wiped the residual sweat from her brow, and gave a huff.
"We can answer that outside right? We've been here long enough, the boy isn't here, the spirit isn't here, and if it returns, we can't guarantee it won't keep us here forever. Let's go."
Almost as an afterthought, or maybe an aftershock, her eyes flicked to the door and a slight hint of pleading came into her voice.
"...please."
