2024-02-27: When Are You Moving In?
- Log: When Are You Moving In?
- Cast: Nidaime, Shari Loom
- Where: Fujinomiya, Japan
- Date: 2024-02-27 (ICly September 0098)
- Summary: Nidaime is not a real estate agent, and Shari can't read a kaiju's touchpad.
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"We've got a great apartment here today!" The Kaneko to Kawaguchi Real Estate Agent, identified by her name badge only as 'Nidaime' -- 'Second Generation' -- holds a clipboard as she presses a key into the door. She holds it for perhaps three seconds longer than you'd expect, before...
Click.
It's a real key which really goes to this door. Don't ask why she's used the same key for every door.
"It's got everything a growing adult needs! The floor and the ceiling are impossible to mix up!" She says, as she steps inside, gesturing to the empty space. "And look -- a literal water closet! Isn't that funny?" She laughs, as she slides open the door to the extremely pokey bathroom. There is, technically, a shower. "Oh, and it even has a kitchen! Gone are the days of trekking to the nearest vending machine!" It's a rather small kitchen, but this is quite a small apartment. That might explain why it didn't get a large showing, here on this open day.
"You have fun looking through here, okay?" She asks, as she proceeds to step into the closet designed for clothes, sliding the door shut.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
A great apartment! That's definitely encouraging, except... that...
That is the same key for every door. Shari didn't notice the first time. ...Or the second, actually. But--
"I mean, that's encouraging?" Shari has gone along with it so far because she likes this agent's energy. She's not sure what Second Generation means but it's probably something cool and hip.
"Wait, is that--a shower???" Shari cannot entirely believe it. But the kitchen is--
"Look, that's nice, but--"
Pause. Nidaime steps into the closet. Shari waits a few moments. She waits a few moments more.
"...I've never asked someone to come out of the closet before," she reflects eventually.
"But uhh..."
"Is it especially nice in there or something...?"
Shari peers, and--
Well it would be rude to force her out. But Shari? Definitely not a kaiju.
"I'm actually looking for something for more like two people," she says, then. "Since, I've got someone coming in from out of the country..."
Pause. "Wait. Do you usually have trouble mixing up the floor and ceiling???"
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
Nidaime, crouched inside the closet, is tapping something into her clipboard which -- might not, in fact, be a clipboard, judging by the data scrolling by on it. "Naito, I'm getting negative readings here, t--"
And without missing a beat, she goes from talking into her collar to looking up to Shari with a big beaming smile on her face. "It's great in here! Look at how you can fit a whole person inside! I'm pretty sure you'd call this a second bedroom. See? This is where the bed goes," she straightens up, tapping a foot to the ground.
"So it's totally good for two people! Totally." Nidaime comes out of the closet, as if the closet could ever define her existence. "And it's very important to delineate between the floor and the ceiling," she adds, quite serious. "Since humans can't float, don't you think you'd have a lot of trouble if you ended up there?" She points upwards, towards the ceiling, as if that's a real problem Shari might have.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
That is definitely not a clipboard. Shari knows, on account of having seen many non-clipboards in her time.
That big beaming smile is nice, but, "That's uh... That's definitely a hard sell. I don't think I'd call this a bedroom unless I wanted leg cramps..."
Shari hears that seriousness. "I would! I would fall. It would be very embarrassing."
"...Okay, so."
Pause.
"Do you want to pretend I didn't see you talking into a secret radio or something and talking about 'readings' you're getting and data you're getting? Because I can probably do that for a little longer."
Pause. "Okay probably not that much longer. I really do need to find an apartment, but..."
"C'mon, I have to know what you're up to."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"Aww, come on, it's cosy," Nidaime weedles, as if leg cramps were so easy to ignore.
But Shari -- the one person still here with Nidaime on this apartment journey, presumably because everyone else grew too weirded out -- calls Nidaime on her suspicious behaviour, and Nidaime gasps. "Huh?! No, no! Don't be silly, I'd never --"
She reaches into the breast pocket of her pantsuit jacket, and pulls out some, "AMNESIA DUST!!"
And throws a packet of sherbet on Shari.
But when she runs to the window, she goes, "eh! Eeeeehhh!!" As she tries to open it, only to find it quite stuck.
"Eheheheh..." She chuckles, as she turns back to Shari, gesturing to the window. "And as you can see, the windows are all very secure! So, shall we sign the forms now, ooorrr..."
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari blinks, as she's suddenly beset by sugar. Delicious, delicious sugar. Some of it gets in her mouth. That could be worse. Some of it gets in her eyes, which is less good. "Waugh!"
She stumbles back in surprise. But then Nidaime tries to open the window, and...
Shari...
"What forms?" Shari asks, putting on big eyes, made bigger by her expertly-done makeup. "Wait, who are you?"
"...Where are we?" She sounds more confused than anything.
But Nidaime might realize she is FUNNING. "How did I get here???"
It's amnesia dust, see.
...She manages to keep a straight face for at least fifteen seconds. This is what happens when Shari thinks about what a theatre kid would do.
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"Hey, neat! It worked!" Nidaime sounds honestly surprised about that. "I mean, uh -- you're here looking at apartments! For you and your... frieeeeend...?" Here she leans forward, grinning, poking a finger at Shari.
And then she leans a little closer, and narrows her eyes, and says: "Heeey!! Wait a second, you're lying! You don't don't know where you are! You're a where-knower!"
She pouts, folding her arms.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari can only keep a straight face for so long. She might manage to hold out until Nidaime actually calls her out on lying, and then she bursts out laughing. "No, I--"
It takes her a few seconds.
"Okay, okay. It totally didn't work even a little. I'm definitely a where-knower."
"Maybe I should be more worried you're some kind of axe murderer but I haven't laughed like that in a while."
"...I'm Shari. Is your name really Nidaime? Or is that a fake, too?"
She smiles more brightly than a goth has a right to. "...I'm not like, dying to know, but I totally do wanna know. I stuck with you because you seem like fun."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"Ahh, geez..." Nidaime sighs, sliding a hand over her tied-back hair. "I totally messed up! Why are humans so complicated?!"
But she smiles, splaying that hand to her chest. "Nope! I'm really the Second. Anosillus the Second, to be precise. My father was the first, get it?" Technically, her name means that she's the second-generation Anosillus, but that's surely just a quirk of translation.
Surely.
"And I don't have an axe," she says, patting down her jacket. "See? I haven't stored one anywhere inside me!" Inside her pockets, she surely means. "Actually, I'm here to do the opposite of murdering. I'm an opposite axe murderer. I'm making sure that nothing crops up in the city that would axe murder you all!"
She could probably sound a little less cheerful about that.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"Man, that's a good question," Shari says, when Nidaime asks why humans are so complicated. "If I knew that I'd be like, totally in business."
She likes that smile. "The Second! I see. So, Second Generation..." Like on her nametag!
"OK." A pause. "That's good," Shari says, about not having an axe. She's not sure she means pockets. But she hopes she means pockets.
"Oh!" Shari answers. "Well, it turns out that not being murdered is one of my favorite things? So I'm OK with that!"
Shari is not entirely sure she's not dreaming or something. But if this is a dream she's got to analyze some things about her psyche and she's not worried about that right now.
"But if you're looking for data or readings or something, I happen to be..." Leina says be careful!! "An intern for a big science company in Fujinomiya!"
Pause. "...Besides. You're a lot more likely to be murdered by someone you know than a stranger, so we're both probably safe today."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"Oh, humans are big fans of not being murdered," Nidaime agrees. "Except for some of them, I guess, but that kind of despair is its own problem."
It's also very sad, aside from how easy it is to feed kaiju, but anyway.
"Weeelll..." She says, tapping a finger to her lip, "... okay! Have a look at this!" She turns her clipboard over, handing it over to Shari, and --
It's a completely incomprehensible mess. There's something there which is clearly capturing a wavelength, but not all of the information is, strictly speaking, in human-parsable language -- there's a lot of zeroes and ones, and some symbols which don't seem to be Earth-origin at all, and the information seems to be phasing in and out through two ways of being seen judging by the way they're flickering erratically.
"See the problem?" Nidaime asks, as if it's obvious.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"And I am definitely human!" Shari announces. Despair... "Even when I was feeling super low I'd rather be alive," she admits. "...But I guess I've seen a lot of that kind of thing, too."
Not everybody in the Silent Calling is there because they've had a happy life.
But, "Sure!"
Shari has a look and--a wavelength. Lots of zeroes and ones, and symols she doesn't know, and things that make her eyes hurt.
"Nope!" Shari says, and she sounds... delighted?
"I've never seen a science thing like this I had this little clue about!" she announces cheerfully.
"Oh well. Thanks for letting me try. A lot of people look at me and assume I don't know much."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"Nice work," Nidaime gives Shari a thumbs-up when she affirms that she isn't suicidal. That's... probably a normal thing to thumbs-up.
Whether she's poked around the organisation run by that woman who stole her partner's blood at all is something for Nidaime to know and Shari to -- not realise to ask about, probably. And speaking of things Shari doesn't realise --
"Eheheheh!" Nidaime cackles, as she takes the clipboard back. "Basically, it's telling me there's no monsters around here right now. Which is good! We like that! I'd hate to sell you an apartment which was gonna get squashed." She pauses, and adds: "... though, I don't know if the company would recognise my sales. I maaaaybe fudged my employment an itsy-bitsy bit."
The skeleton key is fake. She's not even a real real estate agent!
"But do people really think you don't know much?" She asks, tilting her head, as if trying to figure out the angle whereby Shari is ignorant. "You saw right through my amnesia dust. That's pretty smart!" IS IT, NIDAIME?!
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"Yeah!" Shari answers. "Go me!"
It's fine. Shari of course continues not to realize that part, though she continues not to be part of that organization anymore, either. That won't be an issue later.
"Ohhh," Shari answers. "I see. Yeah, I do like that." Pause. "...That's definitely..."
She shrugs, after a moment. "I mean, that'd be on me if I signed," she decides.
"Yep," Shari says. "Some teenager, can't know much. If I'm lucky they think I'm pretty before they decide I'm dumb." She shakes her head. "But my boyfriend's not like that. And neither are the PPL."
"...That's the organization I work with," she explains. "They deal with monsters and stuff too. But I don't. I don't do fighting anymore."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"Buyer beware, you're in for a scare!" Nidaime, that's Goosebumps. You're thinking of Goosebumps, not real estate. Nidaime --
Nope, she's already moved on.
Nidaime grins. "Teenagers can know an awful lot," she says. "Enough to wreck all existence... and enough to save it, too. It's pretty funny how this world makes teenagers responsible for all that stuff and still manages to put you down, isn't it?"
She puts her hand to her cheek, though, and titters: "A boyfriend! I knew it!! Ahhh!!" Wriggle, wriggle.
"But if you don't fight, it's pro~ba~bly better for you to forget about me," she says, walking past Shari, back to the front door. "Since when the Gridknight Alliance appears... it's in response to threats to this world."
She smiles, again. "So let's not cooperate on this one, okay?"
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari's too young for that one.
"...Huh," Shari says. She gets the idea that Nidaime is pretty sincere about that stuff about teenagers, too. "Yeah," she says. "It is, isn't it?"
Then, a laugh. "Yeah. First time living with somebody else outside a dorm situation, too..."
But... Probably better. Nidaime walks past, and talks about the Gridknight Alliance.
"...Sure," Shari says. "Let's not." She's... probably okay with that. It's not her place anymore, is it?
She's helping a different way.
"But good luck, OK?"
She waves.
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"Heeey, nice work! Have fun, okay? And remember to put whipped cream on EVERYTHING! Who's gonna tell you no?" Nidaime is so supportive and has excellent ideas.
She grins, and says, "Thanks!", and heads through the door --
-- and locks it --
-- and it's like, ten minutes before the door unlocks again, and she goes, "Woops! Forgot this wasn't your house," and lets Shari out.
It's definitely not awkward.