Nemina swished and flicked, and the last tiny demons sprung off her hands and splashed onto the ground like tiny droplets of black mud, before immediately uprooting themselves and proceeding to scurry around like tiny little beetles. Nemina stepped on them and casually ground them into the sidewalk with her heel.
"That should be the last of them," she said, looking up at the final hotel. It had been a pain finding them all, but luckily she lived in the 21st century, where there were such useful tool as Google Maps. Also, she was not a magi, and as such was not a luddite afraid of modern technology.
"Are we going back then? I would have loved to stay out longer."
"No," Nemina shook her head, glancing behind herself out of the corner of her eyes. Yes, she hadn't been paranoid and imagined it after all.
It was there. Like they'd think she wouldn't notice. "There's someone tracking us."
"Tracking us...? Like....?"
"That familiar, on the roof of that building, you see that? It's been trailing us for the last two hours. The owner didn't do a good enough job of making it inconspicuous and I pinged onto it after the second hotel."
"Someone had the same idea as you, then."
"Yeah," she nodded. "Seed the town with a few easy to make familiars with cameras, stick their feeds onto the same screen. You can get a surveillance net for cheap, that way."
"You sound like you've had a lot of experience with this."
"The Church uses a similar technique a lot." Nemina slide back onto the sidewalk and continued walking, deliberately keeping her movements nonchalant- trying not to alarm anybody. "The vampires who get strong enough to think, but aren't strong enough to openly resist the Church, they start trying to cover their trails. We track down where they lair and hit them there."
"Sounds bad. For us, I mean."
"Not exactly." Nemina trundled into a low cost clothing store and began picking through layers of nondescript shirts and pants. "Whoever's been watching the feeds hasn't moved on them yet- so right now it's just information. Not particularly good information either. All he knows is that I'm wearing a really heavy coat which obscures most of my defining body features and I was doing something to the hotels. He doesn't know what I look like underneath the jacket nor who I am or even what servant you are. But on my side, their trap is sprung, and I'm aware of it now."
"So they blew their cover on some bad information. We're going to use this, right?"
"Yeah," Nemina nodded. "First off, I'm going to reschedule my appointment with Father Crowley. They're likely going to be watching his Church. I don't think they'll go as far as to put a tail of the neutral overseer of Grail War, but it's not implausible," Nemina said, examining a blue windbreaker with her left hand, while rapidly texting with her right.
<<Father Crowley, this is Sister Gallimard of the Basilique Cathédrale Sainte-Croix d'Orléans, participant for this Holy Grail War. If it's not too much trouble, could we going out later tonight, perhaps for a late meal? I know I was set to come in tomorrow morning to register my servant, but I've discovered some unfortunate complications regarding the servant summoning. Also one of the participants might have set their familiars to trail you, just a note of warning.>>
Nemina scrolled through it one more time, and then tapped the send button. Hopefully Father Crowley would return her text when he had the time. In the meanwhile... she snatched up a pair of pants, and some tacky sunglasses and stepped into the changing room to try them out. A quick bounded field to ensure privacy, and then to change.
First, the coat. The coat dropped to the ground, where it made a heavy metallic thud. Nemina winced. Ah. Hopefully she hadn't damaged the ground.
"Oh, wow. What did you put in there."
"A couple of Black Keys, some flashbombs, anchors for defensive bounded fields, and a lot of other stuff. It doesn't matter- we're going to have to ditch most of it anyway." Nemina sighed. That was a lot of gear getting thrown away. Well, no, maybe she could save most of it. The Black Keys, at the very least. Most of the other stuff was easily replaceable, but she didn't fancy having to write back to her boss to ask for another set of holy swords.
She turned to look at herself in the mirror. Underneath the bulky coat she was... pretty small actually. Yellow-grayish hair, cute face, amber eyes like dragons. Nemina reached up to smooth down her ahoge, only for to pop right back up. She sighed. Nevermind then.
For clothing, she was wearing a dumb orange touristy t-shirt, with something about Florida and Gaters stenciled across her chest, but most interestingly, strewn across both her arms were holy shrouds. She slipped on the blue windbreaker, and pulled up a pair of tight jeans across similarly wrapped legs. Lastly, the sunglasses and a baseball cap. She turned back to the mirror. "How do I look?"
"Like a really tacky tourist."
...yeah, true enough. "But would I stand out?"
"No, you'd blend right in with the rest of the tourists. That's why it's so tacky."
"Perfect," Nemina took the clothes off and folded them neatly on the bench before pulling her old coat back on. "We're going to use these to lose our tail."
Dispelling the bounded field on the changing room, she walked back out into the small store, new clothes tucked under-arm. On the way to the checkout counter, she grabbed two cheap backpacks.
Five minutes until my shift's over. Ugh. Another weirdo. Hm, actually if I look at her face she's kind of cute, but like she's also wearing a giant coat in the middle of a Floridian summer, so cute but crazy. "Hi, can I help you?"
"Oui," Nemina played up her accent for emphasis. Americans, she found, were much more likely to play nice if they thought you were just a kooky foreigner. "This is check-out, oui?"
Oh, she's foreign. That explains it. "Yes, this is check out." The young teenager at the checkout counter smiled at her. "You're wanting to buy those?"
Nemina nodded. "Oui."
As the checkout boy ran the items through, he kept glancing over at Nemina. She could tell what he was thinking.
This foreign girl is actually cuter than I thought she was.
I wonder if she'd accept if I asked her out on a date. The answer to that was no, Nemina thought, but she pretended like she was a completely normal human being who couldn't read minds and plastered a smile on her face.
"Um, so alltogether, that'll be uh, 62.95?"
"Do you acceptz-vous cash?"
"Er, yeah, sure." The checkout boy hastily ran the money through the machine. "Er, are you visiting Florida?"
"Oui," Nemina nodded. "I am visiting a priest here."
Oh, she's religious.
Man, when Johnny said you could meet cute foreign girls at church I thought he was kidding! "Oh. Um, I hope you have fun, then. Do you want me to put all of these into one of the backpacks?"
"S'il vous plaît."
After a moment of struggle, the checkout counter boy handed the now full backpack over the counter. "There you go. I hope you come again."
"Maybe if you're still here," Nemina winked and then quickly clasped a hand over her mouth with a look of surprise. "Um- um.... I should go!"
Wait, is she into me? "Hey wait!" The cashier yelled, but Nemina was already fleeing into the streets. She ran for a little bit, before she slowed down, face flushing not particularly from exertion, but embarrassment mostly.
"What exactly was that for?" She grit out.
"C'mon, that kid was totally into you. I could tell. Why not give him a bit of hope?"
"Because we're in a potentially life threatening situation here?" Nemina sighed, and then straightened up, looking back for the familiar again. Hm. Gone now. That wasn't particularly good. "Whatever. We're going to have to hurry up- I think whoever was tracking us decided to make their move."
"So, what's the next step of your master plan?"
"We're going to crash a tourist destination," Nemina whispered, as she moved to fall back into the line of pedestrians moving northwards, sticking closely to the civilians to screen her movement. "Preferably a big one with a lot of people."
She walked, not conspicuously but with a certain sense of urgency, scanning her surrounding as she did so. No- too quite- too obvious- there! An art exhibit, hosting what seemed like a small event. Nemina steeled herself, and then moved towards the crowd, towards the security guard, who stood near the entrance with an somewhat absentminded expression on his face. "Excuse me? Sir?"
"Everything's okay," the man said in a daze.
The sun the sun the sun the sun. "It's all okay."
"What's up with him?"
Nemina inwardsly shrugged. His thoughts... they were extremely strange. But, at the same time it could also just be drugs. "Um, is it alright, if I step inside for a bit?"
"It's okay."
He's here now he's here now he's here now he's here now
Nemina blinked again, and then took another look at the man. There was an odd scent in the air, but the security guard was... human, still. There was nothing wrong with him or his body. Maybe it was just drugs. "Um, alright then."
She bounced up the steps without looking the gift horse in the mouth, trying to ignore the strange prickling on her skin.
The amount of guests were looking like they were dying down now, which was good. A steady movement of people flocking towards the exits, normally, chatting, talking. Great, great. This would work fine. Nemina scanned the foyer for someone who looked like they would be willing to help her. There. Two talking over there- an old white haired mandressed in a somewhat touristy t-shirt and some jeans, talking with a much younger man with a distinctly uncomfortable body language. There was something a little bit... odd about them, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. It was... probably nothing. Nemina decided to walk towards them.
"Um, hi, hello," she called out, to trying to mask her growing unease. "Um, do one of you kind gentlemen mind telling me where the wo-"
And then she saw them. Sclera like molten gold, an iris of rippling tongues of fire reaching outwards. The white hair- that wasn't that of that of an old man's, but of something not quite human. The guard, the scent, the tingling upon her spine and across her skin, it all came together. She'd been too distracted by the shadowgames with her unknown pursuer- she'd missed all the obvious clues!
Nemina froze, and then forced herself to unfreeze. Nothing is wrong. Don't stiffen up. Relax. She slowly untensed herself, and gave him an awkward smile. "-the, uh, where the woman's restroom is?"
@TenfoldShields
@ZerbanDaGreat
