Now, there is no denying some curiosity about what the building's inside looks like after your newfound realisation that buildings had insides to be curious about. There is also no denying that you're not dumb enough to blindly wander into a place that, by your measure, is nothing short of infested with things that may or may not be all to happy to cut your lifespan uncomfortably short for your tastes.
On the other hand, you've already established that the Two-leggers seem inclined to leave the building on their own.
Okay, you only know… Uh… You've seen them outside when the sun was directly overhead, presumably of their own choice. Is it too wild a bet that they'll leave again at some point? At the very least it's worth sticking around to watch for a bit, it's not like you've got anything better to do after all. Nope, nothing pressing. You could probably spend an entire day here if you wanted and didn't mind the inevitable boredom that would ensue from staring at the same building for hours on end.
There is one small problem though: Yellow. You still have no idea what it is, but the more you think about how it was moving the more you get the feeling that it was stalking you every bit as much as you were trying to stalk Pink. Past tense though: Was stalking you. It seemed to have stopped moving around so erratically now, actually it had stopped the not-so-random movement shortly after the bell rang and it had headed a bit deeper into the building. Despite the fact it hadn't moved much in minutes now you got the strange feeling that you still had some small amount of Yellow's attention.
For whatever reason that thought seemed to hit you right in the metaphorical danger-sense. Enough to override your normal almost impulsive napping in favour of an urge to keep moving and make yourself a harder target. Maybe it would make it harder for Yellow to keep track of you or something. Maybe not, hard to say. But the feeling of being watched is making you far too restless to humour any thoughts of sleeping. For now, anyways.
At least you weren't likely to miss anything that would've happened whilst napping, you suppose.
---
The building had forty-eight windows by five on its longest side. That was two hundred and forty windows by your count.
The shorter side had thirty by five windows, that added up to one-fifty windows. Altogether, the building had seven hundred and eighty windows, accounting for the other two sides and not counting the other buildings the first connected to, nor the windows removed to accommodate those connections. Come to think of it, maybe minus one window per connection, that seemed about right. So… One, two, three… Right, so take five from the seven-eighty to get seven-seven-five windows. Assuming there weren't any hidden somewhere you couldn't see, like on the roof or inside.
No. You weren't so bored that you'd resorted to counting windows and doing math for entertainment, why do you ask?
…
Okay, fine. You were very bored. Enough that you'd started talking to yourself, and then proceeding to sass yourself in return, in between counting windows and performing basic multiplication. When and where you'd learned to do that escapes you, but something about this building seems to be dragging it from somewhere in the deepest depths of your mind. Also you're getting a little peckish now, just a little.
The sun had drifted from roughly overhead while you'd been waiting. Assuming this world works like your home, you'd guess it at being somewhere around late-mid to early-late afternoon.
And what had your diligent watching, interspaced with regular relocation to evade a threat that may or may not actually exist, revealed?
Nada. Nothing really seemed to have changed. Pink was still somewhere in the building, presumably exactly the same place as it was before, though between your weird colour-sense deciding to be rather vague about the exact distance from you and your constant moving around it's rather hard to say.
Yellow on the other hand? Two big movements, swapping sides on the building. This time the movements seemed unrelated to your location though: you hadn't been on either of the sides Yellow had moved to when, or even immediately before, it began moving. So either it had given up on stalking you, or had just been 'coincidentally' following you around with unerring accuracy wherever you went and just so happening to change directions whenever you did. It's possible.
It's also possible that you'll discover a massive bucket of fresh tea next to a delicious and freshly baked cake the size of your head. And probably just about as likely in your book.
Other than those two Yellow's big moves, there were also a couple bouts of minor movement, more like it had been restlessly wandering around a small area. All of these seemed to coincide with the weird tones that, after hearing a few times, you had come to conclude weren't being made by a bell despite sounding very similar.
As if summoned by the thought, another round of not-bell chiming rang out. This one seemed different to the previous ones, longer than all but the first and with a different sequence of tones. There had to be some kind of logic behind all the different chimes, else why would they be different? Another mystery that would no doubt keep you wondering for some time. Why was it that everything you did seemed to leave you with more questions than answers lately?
You'd probably have started another lengthy thinking session right about then- Seriously, you're on, what, the twelfth mystery of the day? -but one by one the doors began to open, allowing the Two-leggers to begin streaming out. Ones and twos at first, but every few minutes the numbers seemed to surge into a crowd, before falling back to small groups. They weren't staying within the fence this time though. At some point the gates must have been opened, presumably when you weren't looking given how you quite clearly don't remember anyone opening them, and the mass of bodies seemed to be filtering out through them before splintering off in a fair few different directions.
Yellow wasn't among them. It seemed to have headed up to the roof for whatever reason. The inevitable speculation on what it was doing up there was concisely cut off by a sudden thought: Pink wasn't in the building anymore.
Fortunately, Pink was very easy to find, probably because of the whole 'glows like a brighter version of the sun' thing. It was somewhere in the small crowd that had just passed your current vantage point, which… meant it was either a Two-legger or being carried by one. Of course, the same thing that was making it easy to find, not to mention follow, was making it quite hard to actually 'find'.
The crowd seemed to be slowly dispersing on its own though, with members beginning to split off in their own separate directions. One way or another it wasn't going to take long to single out Pink now. In the space of a minute the group had shrunk to eighteen. Another few had brought them to thirteen, then eleven, then nine… Considering one of them had pink hair you had a pretty strong feeling that you might already have the answer to that question. Possibly. Maybe.
Come to think of it, they weren't even all in one group. It was more like a couple groups nearby with a few loners.
You were making sure to give them a fair distance anyway. Perhaps it was yet another bout of paranoia when your camouflage seemed to be working perfectly, but… well, whatever. You've done the song and dance enough times today.
Was it weird that you weren't feeling hungry anymore? Eh, it was probably just the thrill of the hunt, even if you weren't intending to actually hunt anything right now. So… that would make it the thrill of the stalking? Hmm, no. Something about that just feels wrong to say, or think rather.
The groups, and loners, were probably going to split up soon, you should probably figure out now who to follow.
World updates:
It is late afternoon.
Pink is extremely close: exact distance unclear.
Yellow is nearby - Approaching from behind at speed.
Purple has reappeared: Close!
[]Follow:
-[] Group one:
--[] Pink (Presumably)
--[] Blue hair
--[] Green hair
-[] Group two:
--[] Brown hair
--[] Black hair
--[] Orange hair (Really, orange?)
-[] Loners:
--[] Mauve hair
--[] Blonde-ish hair
[] Leave them alone:
-[] Explore the now empty building.
-[] Return to the park.
-[] Go hunting.
[X] EVADE YELLOW AND EVACUATE THE AREA AND IF FOLLOWED LEAD THEM THROUGH THE MOST HARROWING GOOSE CHASE POSSIBLE
Oh crud
We need to leave
NOW!
FOE DRILLS INCOMING!
[X] EVADE YELLOW AND EVACUATE THE AREA AND IF FOLLOWED LEAD THEM THROUGH THE MOST HARROWING GOOSE CHASE POSSIBLE
Oh crud
We need to leave
NOW!
FOE DRILLS INCOMING!
We have not confirmed that but that's why I specified evade yellow not evade drills
In character we already get some very big "warning, dangerous" vibes from yellow and considering that yellow is now beelineing for us and that purple ie homura is close
We need to scram and quickly before we have to deal with either FOE
We are not prepared to battle so it's time to exit stage left
Wouldn't "Explore the now empty building" mean we have to turn around? We just left the school and Mami is following us from there, right?
Anyway, as long as we don't follow Pink, Homura should leave us alone. We probably shouldn't follow Blue/Sayaka because she will probably stay with Pink/Madoka. Maybe Green/Hitomi? Homura shouldn't care about her and Mami would be more focused on keeping her safe than hunting us, I think. Mami getting Hitomi as a friend also doesn't risk Kyubey recruiting her.
Anyway, as long as we don't follow Pink, Homura should leave us alone. We probably shouldn't follow Blue/Sayaka because she will probably stay with Pink/Madoka. Maybe Green/Hitomi? Homura shouldn't care about her and Mami would be more focused on keeping her safe than hunting us, I think. Mami getting Hitomi as a friend also doesn't risk Kyubey recruiting her.
Yeah alright why not. Mami having a friend that can't contract should shake things up in an interesting way. If it happens anyway. But it's worth a shot just on the off chance it works out. If not we don't really lose anything, and we can hide just as well, if not better, in active city streets than an empty school building.
My big problem with the school is that we just left from there and Mami is following us. Given that she started from there too, I would assume that we would run into each other if we go back to the school.
Hmm, now that I think about it; we have no guarantee that Hitomi will split from Madoka/Sayaka before Mami arrives. The worst-case would be Mami and Homura both try to fight us. But we have no IC reason to run away and leaving like that could make Homura suspicious about us, causing her to kill us just to be safe.
Maybe if we follow someone that's not part of Madoka's group we could convince Homura that we don't care about Madoka, causing her to ignore us. Having a group to protect could also distract Mami because with our stealth we could always sneak around her to attack the students.
Yeah, changing my vote.
[X]Follow:
-[X] Group two:
--[X] Orange hair (Really, orange?)
She/He has anime hair and is thus clearly important.
First time voting in a quest, sorry for any mistakes.
Watching out for yellow seems smart, but nothing yet would make us quit following Pink.
Follow her but be very careful of the yellow thing since it's seemingly after us, or at least sensing us.
Side Note: Did being near pink actually fill our hunger up? That seems really important.
[X]Follow:
-[X] Group one:
--[X] Pink (Presumably)
--[X] Write In: try to keep away from yellow / watch out for it carefully while doing so
*as long as I'm posting, just wanted to say this seems like a really fun story. Thanks for running it!