★ WEEK TWO: FORWARD MOVEMENT ★

[modaphor]

[A lot has happened in a few short days.

Arche has grown a great deal from her interactions with the assembled agents of the facility; thanks to their influence, her chamber has taken on a few new additions, including a rapidly filling curio cabinet and, more recently, an orange and black Maine Coon kitten has come to stay in the facility as well. Thanks to Ginti's advice, he is no longer confined to his transparent tank in Arche's Chamber; in fact, you may see him wandering around during the week. Please be kind to the local wildlife!

On a more serious note, Arche has located one of her missing memory cores, which comes with some...vaguely unsettling information surrounding it. But, since the general consensus seemed to be "yes, we'll help", she is now hard at work securing the gateway to the pocket dimension; if asked, she will approximate that it will take her until late Thursday night to get everything up to scratch.

In the meantime, she's helpfully provided some recommendations for people to work on this week, in preparation for this week. If you need something to think about, you might try working on one of those?

Otherwise, the facility is still available to you, as is Arche. Have a good week, everyone!]


SUNDAY | MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY

[OOC: As with last week, if you want to talk to Arche, please use the subheadered comments! Also, we had some agents looking around for clues last week, so as a way of encouraging and streamlining that —

If you intend to look for clues, please explicitly mention what sort of thing you're looking for and approximately where you are looking, and consider asking for mod attention in the comment header so I can find it easier! Thanks, everybody!]

Comments

[thermals]

[Let's check out the bed first, since it's the first thing in immediate line of sight.]

[modaphor]

[And here is the bed. Sheets, pillows, blankets, mattresses, and a headboard.

What variety of clue is he looking to spot? Is he checking to see if the bed's been moved recently, if someone's slept in it recently, etc. What is he trying to find out by looking at it?]

[thermals]

[He's looking at the bedspread itself to start to see if anything has changed. Unless someone came behind him and made it up, it should still be wrinkled and unkempt. In particular, though, he's eyeing all of the wooden parts of the bed- the headboard, the bedposts, etc.- to see if there are any marks of any kind on them.]

[modaphor]

[It is indeed still wrinkled and unkempt! Though it's apparent from the relative crispness of the sheets that they were fresh prior to Tobias himself ending up in them, the level of rumpled here is precisely where it should be in terms of whether or not it's changed.

As for the wood, there does seem to be some wear and tear — from the way the surface is slightly uneven in places, buffed in some and untouched in others, it's fairly clear that it's been used before.]

[thermals]

[...now that's interesting, isn't it? If all of the furnishings in this place were totally new and exclusively put there for their group, that wouldn't be like that. And from how Arche kept mentioning that her cores were removed by previous agents, that certainly does get Tobias thinking.

From there he'll turn his attention to the desk he's standing on. Does it appear to have some wear and tear similar to the bed?]

[modaphor]

[It does! Between his hawk's eyes and the incredibly close proximity, he's capable of counting pretty much every grain and whorl in the top of the desk. In fact, he might almost be too close for some of it, running the risk of missing the forest for the sake of each individual iota of tree.

However, it looks like there might be a warped mark on the tabletop, about the size of a coffee cup — probably from condensation where something once sat.]

[thermals]

[Tobias lifts a foot before taking a few steps back as he eyes the desk. It doesn't really help much in the I can see all department, but he does take note of the warped area of the surface. Clearly someone else has spent time in here before him, and probably quite a bit of time. But what were they doing?

He decides then to hop down from the desk onto the surface of the bed itself before winging his way up onto one of the bedposts to give himself a bit of a better vantage point. Can he see anything else particularly of note on the desk from here?]

[modaphor]

[He can definitely confirm it's a coffee-mug-sized ring on the desk now, yup! That seems to be all he can discern from what's there, but hey, for a guy with no opposable thumbs, it's definitely something.]

[thermals]

[It sure is. Even though those shelves are tempting, he knows he's not going to make it anywhere fast with those right now, so he might have to save those for last. Instead, he jumps from the bed and flies toward the walk-in closet to land a bit awkwardly on one of the empty clothes-hanger bars. This is actually only the second time he's looked in here, having no real reason to otherwise. So he'll be checking first to see if there are any visible signs of prior use here as well...already the utter lack of clothes is admittedly a little strange, assuming all of the bedrooms are furnished the same way.]

[modaphor]

[That's quite the feat of acrobatic skill, landing on one of those hanger bars, Tobias.

Given the speed he'd need to stay aloft, plus the relatively cramped space between the bar and the wall and ceiling of the closet, and the difficulty in actually landing on the thing after trying to navigate the enclosed area...well, let's just say that's proven a little bit outside his range of capability.

Hawk, meet wall. You missed the perch and found the back of the closet with your beak, instead. :c ]

[thermals]

[Oh god-

Helpless to actually stop himself, Tobias keeps on going until he hits the wall with an undignified squawk, tumbling down until he falls flat on his back on the dark closet floor. Thankfully that fall wouldn't be far enough to hurt him seriously but freaking ow.]

< Uuugh...okay, bad idea. Bad idea... >

[He lies there for a few long seconds- very glad that he was...alone for that- before trying to right himself. He's not even going to try to take back to the air right now. He'll do all the looking he needs to from the relative safety of the ground, thanks.]

[modaphor]

[You whacked it a pretty good one there, Tobias. You're now on the ground and dazed; where are we looking and what are we looking for?]

[thermals]

[...hang on, give him a second to just reevaluate his life choices for a moment.

Once his head has stopped ringing from the force of the impact, he'll start to scan the bar he was trying to land on. Anything unusual up there about those empty hangers?]

[modaphor]

[There is nothing at all unusual about the underside of that bar. It is decidedly a bar, and does not appear to have seen much use, which seems about normal as the undersides of suspended things tend to go.]

[thermals]

[Hm. Well, since he's already there, he'll look at the floor next. The closet may seem empty, but maybe there's something on the floor he can spot from down here?]

[modaphor]

[He's ending up having the same problem as he had with the desk, actually; lots of close-range glances at individual molecules of floor, but that makes it very difficult to put anything into any sort of wider context.

He's got a nice view of some near-microscopic dust specks, though.]

[thermals]

[It only takes him a second or two of that to realize that this isn't going to really work. Between cracking his beak on the wall and now this, he's not entirely sure if there is anything in this room worth investigating. ...but he's here, and he doesn't plan on coming back, so he might as well be thorough while he's at it.

But that also causes him to pause as he turns his attention away from the floor. Everything is just...way, way too close. Too close to actually make sense of anything.

...maybe this isn't a job for his hawk eyes after all?]

[modaphor]

[Unfortunately, even if his surroundings could've heard that probably-rhetorical question, they are inanimate objects and cannot answer it for him.

They'll be here and waiting once he figures out what he wants to do, though. o/]

1/2

[thermals]

[...

Well. He did want to check out those shelves anyway, and he's not getting anywhere fast this way. His door is nearly shut and he's in the closet, so maybe nobody will think to come in here right now. And if they do, well. Given what Arche already knows, he knows he won't be able to keep this up forever.

So, before he can second-guess himself and change his mind, Tobias closes his eyes and tries to ignore his throbbing head and hammering heart long enough to focus. At least the feeling of the changes is something he's already well used to.]

2/2

[thermals]

[It feels like an eternity passes before the changes have completed, but once they have he's no longer standing on talons in what feels like a massive auditorium sized empty closet. Now he stands as a human boy, in...a decidedly smaller empty closet. If there's a light in here, he'll reach over to turn it on (because Lord knows the hawk can't really see well in the dark, and neither can he now), but if not he'll remain standing where he is.

Okay, so. We're looking at the floor again, sans the super microscopic vision. How are things looking now?]

[modaphor]

[From this much better vantage point (and admittedly less rocket-powered vision capabilities), he can see that this closet floor is definitely a floor. It's wood, so there's a little bit of dust collected in the minor cracks between the floorboards, but it doesn't look as though any part has noticeably worn smooth or dull — probably owing to the fact that closets aren't really high-traffic areas for walking around in.]

[thermals]

[Alright, now we're getting somewhere. He can easily get back into the closet if he needs to- and it doesn't seem like there's much in here- so after another moment of checking the floor for wear, Tobias steps back into the bedroom.

Now he walks slowly over to the shelves of the desk, pulling them open to see if there is anything inside them.]

[modaphor]

[They slide open easily, one by one; if someone cleaned them out, they were pretty thorough about it, because the desk is as empty as if it were new.

All in all, Tobias, it looks as though you're not the first person to have occupied this room, but whoever was here last did a good job of leaving nothing behind.]

[thermals]

[The lack of tangible clues doesn't necessarily mean he's been left with nothing to think about. Just knowing that this room was lived in previously tells him a lot and pretty much confirms the fact of there being agents before them.

Tobias carefully shuts the drawers with a sigh, looking back over at his desk before sinking down to sit onto the edge of his bed. It's something, and that's all he could ask for. For now, he's content with what he's found.]