To Get Anything Done, Do It Yourself[open,hunters]

[DesperateDark]

Well, it did seem that her two friends had control of over the questions and answers of the situation, so Bian Ly thought she might as well make herself useful and jot some notes and references in case they would need them. She took out a small pocket notebook and a pen and began to jot down notes as the information came along, looking up once in a while before turning her attention back to the paper.

Until the subject of Kali came up.

"Kali? That lippy little lady that works the shifts at Oceana after me? Aish, I know her and can get information on her when our shifts overlap. If you can't even track down how she works..." Bian Ly let that trail off, shaking her head impatiently and continuing to jot down the notes they needed. The Angelique woman droned on and on; Ryan's a hyena, his weakness is the girl, Ryan the killer, Ryan the best, blah blah blah. But finally told them she had to be heading out.

Bian Ly looked up as a business card was shoved in her face. She took it, but stuffed it in her pocket without looking at it. Knowing herself, she'd probably lose it or stick it in the wash or something. She then looked back and forth between her two senior comrades, silently asking if this little song and dance was done so she could put away the notebook.

[Fulong|Clara]

"A hyena?" Onji's voice was properly cynical, her disbelief showing on her face. "Are we talking about the same animals? The scrawny things that are only ever useful when in a pack? My God, you have been letting this place go, haven't you, if you've been losing to one in hand-to-hand combat! Did nobody think to bring a gun? Several guns? A homebrew explosive?"

She was clearly struggling to bring her voice back to neutral. "You can take Elder and stuff it right now. We haven't decided whether or not we're even staying in this crapsack town, and I for one don't know if it's worth it if things are the way they are. This town sounds like it's about to go off in your face, and another Elder won't help anyone. The only thing a rank changes are the number of pips on my shoulder, and last I checked, they didn't affect a friend's standing among friends in any way except negatively."

Taking a breath, she slid off the dresser and leaned against it, gazing out the window. "We don't live here. We don't intend to live here, either, if Mulberry knows where this meeting place is. You'd be better off finding a new spot. And don't worry about Mrs. Mulberry. She'll talk if she wants her son back."

She accepted the card with relatively good grace for all of that, glancing at it and placing it on the dresser beside her. "We'll keep in touch. Trust me, you'll know if we have further questions."

[Aras|Ofelia]

"Hyena?" An-qi’s expression pretty much mirrored On-ji’s. "Spotted hyena, I'm assuming. By all means, he shouldn't be very dangerous at all. First off, he hasn't got a pack, just his girl, who isn’t even a hyena; second, he's a male of a matriarchal species. And--this bears repeating--they’re scrawny. Unless his opponents are all letting themselves get munched to death, I don't see why he poses such a threat. Tell me, have you been sending Hunters after him, or just idiots?"

She stood up and stretched. "I don't give a damn about rank, Sharpe. What's all this about promotions to Elder? I thought Elders in backwater places like these jealously guarded their position by bloodline."

An-qi gave her younger friend a curious look when she revealed her acquaintance with Kali. The three would talk amongst themselves about this later. Still, she shook her head; how was it that they, the new arrivals in town, could get their hands on information that the so-called Elders couldn't even obtain?

Giving the business card a cursory glance and shoving it in her pocket, she turned to her friends and with a smirk. Party at the mansion! her expression seemed to say.

[Jocelyn[Spirit]]

Angelique rolled her eyes and was getting beyond agitated now. She could barely talk to this group without them critizing everything and being 'Im the best, I know everything, you all suck.' And she had had enough of that. She shrugged her shoulders at them, tapped her business card and took a step towards the door.

If you don't like it here. Leave. I was offering you a job. We may not have the best of the best here but there is something called respect and you lack it. I have respected you, talked to you, answer all of your damn questions, payed you what you want, given you want you will need, and there is yet no respect. Numbers on the card.

She scowled at them and turnd to leave. She walked and as she was walking she let her body shift into its tiger form. She stood at the door and turned to give one last look at the others, she flexed her lips and twitched her tail at them before turning and walking out the dor, disappearing into the brush.

[Aras|Ofelia]

There were a few seconds of tense silence after Angelique stalked out the door, letting it slam behind her. Raising an eyebrow, An-qi gave her friends a look that spoke clearly of exasperation before she let out an indignant huff. "Right." She plopped back down and shifted so she sat cross-legged on the crate.

"So what do you propose we do first? Bian Ly, you'll strike up a conversation or two with Kali when you can; the more information the better, it's best if she thinks of you as a friend, et cetera, et cetera. This is also an excuse for the two of us to grab a couple of drinks at Oceana." A sigh. "And I hate to admit it, but if it came down to hand-to-hand combat, I would get my arse handed to me. So. We're going to make sure it doesn't come down to that."

Tracing circles in the dust with a finger, An-qi wiped it off on her jeans before continuing. "And I suppose we should go talk to Mrs. Mulberry as soon as we can. How're we going to get into the mansion, though? The Hunters here--with the exception of Sharpe--don't know about us. Besides, it would look mighty suspicious if we were spotted entering and leaving the place, ah, unmolested."

[Fulong|Clara]

Onji puddled back onto the floor almost instantly after the door slammed, spreading back into the patch of sunlight. "Bian Ly's the best chance we have for infiltration at this point. The two of them ought to know each other decently well by now, and neither you nor I are terribly good at subtleties. Once the two of them have got to know each other relatively well, then we can pop in for drinks. I should hope we're good enough to refrain from blowing our cover even if we are completely pissed off our feet."

She thought for a moment, contemplating the business card, then shook her head. "The mansion should be out of bounds for the time being. We need to establish a contact among the current Hunters who can act as messenger for us--either someone intelligent enough to know the risks of betraying us or someone stupid enough to trust us completely. It's easier to explain away accidentally meeting a known Hunter than it is to explain away accidentally stumbling into a Hunter headquarters."

She tapped the business card lightly. "Besides, Sharpe ought to be clever enough to change the headquarters for the time being if she doesn't want to lose any more men. She can contact us from there." Silence for a moment as she stared at the card intently. Then, abruptly, she popped it into her mouth and chewed.

[DesperateDark]

A long pause as Bian Ly continued to stare at the door after Angelique let it slam shut behind her. Oh, how mature if you, Elder. The girl shoved the notepad into the pocket of her hoodie along with the business card; her job as resident secretary was done for now.

“Meh, all I know about Kali right now is…” a pause as Bian Ly thought about it. “She works shifts before or after me, and only twice did we overlap. She’s got lip, attitude, the full blown sassy, spoiled, my-life-sucks princess syndrome. Also Ryan’s girlfriend, and seems to put up with absolutely anything he throws at her, whether it be words or chairs.”

“And as for the mansion,” Bian Ly crossed her legs on the floor, not paying attention to the kick-up of dust and whatever else accumulated on the wooden surface. “It is probably better to stay away and have a messenger like On-Ji said. We just need to find said messenger somehow. Anybody got contacts around here?” The last question was partially rhetorical—Bian Ly knew that her two friends were relatively new in town and haven’t been there for quite as long as her. But even she would be considered a newcomer.

[Aras|Ofelia]

There was an amused snort from An-qi's general direction when On-ji suddenly began munching on the business card. She did in fact know what her friend was thinking, but that was hardly the way An-qi would have chosen to dispose of the paper. (And dispose of it she would. What kind of Elder put her name and contact information on a piece of paper anybody could accidentally find? It was irrevocably stupid, to say the least.) Fire; she probably would have gone with fire.

But as long as On-ji was chewing happily away, An-qi might as well take advantage of the moment. She stared at the number on the card, muttering in Mandarin and committing the digits to memory. That done, she held out the paper to her friend.

"Binturongs eat everything, right? You can take care of this for me." A grin accompanied her words, and she waved the paper in front of On-ji's nose as if it were a tempting marshmallow.

An-qi rolled her eyes at Bian Ly's description of Kali. "Sounds like a joy. I'm glad you're the one who has to deal with this, sorry. But as far as contacts go... well, I barely know anyone in this town, and everyone is understandably tight-lipped about their allegiance." She shrugged helplessly. "I don't even know how to go around establishing a contact, besides going through the trouble of finding Sharpe again. And she left in such a hurry, too."

[Fulong|Clara]

"You forget," and there was mild reproach in Onji's tone, though her words were slightly muffled by the business card, "that I am also in possession of, as you put it, 'lip, attitude, the full-blown sassy, spoiled, my-life-sucks princess syndrome.' Well, perhaps not the princess syndrome. Though my life does suck quite a lot. I think it's the not having heating in my house thing; I think I'm entitled to it."

She took An-qi's card and popped it into her mouth without a second thought, nodding at Bian Ly's pocket. "Y'might want to give that to me, too. The last thing we need around here is getting caught with a Hunter Elder's phone number while we're out on a reccy. Safer in here." She tapped her head. "Anyway, try to get to know her anyway, will you? Not every Innocent's a self-entitled little pisspot, you know; quite a lot of them are simply very boring. It's entirely possible she's one of the latter."

She paused for a moment to swallow, then continued. "Let's stick to ourselves for now. We've established with Sharpe that we work freelance or not at all, and I trust our own information more than I trust anyone else's for obvious reasons. If we manage to find contacts during that time, so much the better."

[DesperateDark]

"But the reason I we put up with your lip, attitude, and the full-blown sassy, spoiled, my-life-sucks princess syndrome is because you have a valid reason for it." Bian Ly watched as On-Ji popped An-Qi's card into her mouth, before giving a slight nod at her own pocket. She took the card out, took the number into memory before flicking it in her friends' direction; the piece of paper landing on On-Ji's knee.

"Meh, fine fine, I'll do it, but you guys gotta stop by sometime so my brain doesn't explode." Bian Ly took another glance around the little shack that was supposedly a meeting place for Hunters. Bah, it was a rickety old shed on a river, what else was new? These guys must've been seriously underfunded, and the cheques she got better not bounce.

There wasn't much else to discuss. All there was left was for her to get close to Kali and hope that nothing stupid happened, either on her part of anybody else's. Her shift was gonna start soon anyways, and she better get there. Maybe she might catch Kali today when she was getting on or off her own shift anyways. "Kay guys, I have to go to work. I'll get to it."

Bian Ly phased back into her talisman form, and the little platypus scrambled out the doggy door and was off like a shot, heading in the direction of the town.

[Aras|Ofelia]

"Hah, that's because you don't live with her," An-qi said with an unnecessarily dramatic sigh. "Anyway, I feel for you. Sounds like you'll either find yourself bored to tears or tearing your hair out in frustration. Good luck, man. In the meanwhile, Rena and I are going to go about pretending we're doing our jobs as biologists. Not sure how exactly we're supposed to do that, though..."

There was also the issue of establishing a contact within Hunter ranks, but An-qi was quite clueless when it came to that. Perhaps they would be giving Sharpe a call sooner than they expected--or wanted. The goose hissed--bring it on--and An-qi was quite tempted to allow her talisman's instinctive aggressiveness to take over.

Snickering as Bian Ly flicked the card to On-ji, An-qi called after the platypus as its tail disappeared through the doggy door. "Drinks are on you!" The platypus either didn't hear or ignored her, and through the swinging flap of the door she caught glimpses of it making a beeline toward the town.

Stifling a yawn--was it just her, or did this dingy warehouse have an aura as soporific as a furniture store's?--she waited for On-ji to finish with the cards. "You up for coffee?"


((Fulong, you can write a closing reply, or we can just finish here.))

[Fulong|Clara]

"I've been looking forward to that, actually," said Onji cheerfully, popping Bian Ly's card into her mouth. "Lots of different talismans about. If nothing else, I want to see whom we're working with--or whom we'll be up against, if it comes to that. Which it undoubtedly will."

Silence for a moment; she waved as Bian Ly made her exit, swallowing before answering An-qi's question.

"Coffee sounds good," she agreed, stretching and grinning as her back made a variety of interesting popping noises. "Might as well explore the town a bit more while we're at it. Not that I imagine that would take us very long."

Rolling to her feet, she nodded at An-qi, and with one last look at the dusty interior of the room, they left.