Polce happily walked—almost skipped—to her desk, and took her stamp to hand. “This renovation application? This particular renovation application, Enni? You see this one?”
Enni's eyebrow rose amusedly. “The one you needed an A-5 for?”
“Exactly that one, Enni,” Polce said, and turned to the stack of forms on her desk. “And what do we have here? A stack of—” She froze. No find stack.
Polce hurriedly looked around on her desk, patting down the surface as if they were invisible or eluding her somehow. “Enni? Where is the stack of paper that was on my desk?”
“Hm? Oh, you mean—”
“Yes, the stack that was right here, Enni,” Polce said, her breath picking up. “The one I unwrapped from a brown package and set right here on my desk just a moment ago.”
“Oh, yes, uh, the vampire guy from taxes came by with his badge, and said he needed that stack. Something about a written statement or so.”
“Written... he...”
“Pardon my interruption,” the drachau said as she approached Enni's desk. “Miss Enni? I was told you could inform me about the progress of a certain renovation application.” Behind her, her aide hurriedly paced over to her with a brand new, shiny visitor's badge in her hand.
“Did you add a 404-6 to your request, miss?” Enni asked. “If so, I can give you an update on the progress made on your request.”
“Did I add—” The drachau stopped herself short, and took a deep, calming breath of Zen. “What in Khaine's daffodil eyes is a 404-6?”
Enni's smile was professional, inviting, helpful: a model of helpfulness and civil servitude. “Each 404-6 comes with a serial number we can use to track individual form progress. If you can give me the serial number, I can find out where your form currently is and give you an estimate on the expected processing time.”
The drachau turned her shoulder to give her aid some room to pin the badge to her chest, when she suddenly caught a glimpse of a familiar document. She grinned with a shaky mix of humour and cynicism. “Could you check the progress on the renovation application on the corner of that desk?”
“Of course. Polce, this visitor would like to ask you about the renovation application you're working on.”
Polce, already on her hands and knees to scour the carpet floor for any chance that the vampire missed a form, looked up with a bewildered gaze, and rose to her feet. She looked at the drachau, then at the application form, and then back at the drachau. “This one?” she asked in a small voice, pointing to the relevant application.
“Yes, that one,” the drachau confirmed, and turned to give her aide a lengthy, displeased look. “Ow.”
Polce stared witlessly at the pristine renovation application taunting her from the corner of her desk. Finally, she took a deep breath through her nose and raised her stamp. She hesitated, stopped, and raised her stamp again, looking down at the dotted line she needed to hit.
And then, she dropped the stamp on her desk and burst into tears.
The drachau blinked, stupefied. “Wh—? Why are you crying? I'm the one who got stabbed in the breast.” She checked with her aide, who returned a similarly baffled look. “Was it something I said? Something I didn't say?”
°°°
“Nobody's going to try to kill me,” Nelmeer said, sitting in her new chair at her new desk.
“Yeah, I bet you thought that last time, too,” Sleek maintained, and narrowed his eyes, peering between his eyelids from the darkness he was hiding in. “But when they do, this time, I will catch them in the act, and we'll finally know who's causing us headaches. Now hush, or you'll give me away.”
“Fine,” Nelmeer sighed. She wasn't ungrateful for an extra pair of eyes watching her back, but she did feel uncomfortable having... a pair of eyes watching her.
She swung her pencil, her thinking pencil, while looking over the form in front of her. There was something on her mind, a question burning curiously and aching for an answer. She inhaled deeply to ask, stopped, and finally asked anyway. “How do you fit in there?”
“What do you mean?”
“You're in my drawer. Of my desk.”
The two eyes rolled up to her from the darkness of the slightly open drawer. “...Yes? And?”
“You... you can't...” Nelmeer rubbed her nose pensively. “You don't fit in there.”
“Then... how did I get in?”
“This is my question,” Nelmeer confirmed. “How did you fit into my drawer?”
“Easy,” Sleek said. “You took your pencils out.”
“There were, like, two pencils in there,” Nelmeer argued astonishedly.
“Three,” Sleek corrected. “There were three pencils.”
“Oh. Are you, uh, are you alright?”
“Uncomfortable,” Sleek admitted. “You keep your pencils sharp.”
“Yeah, okay, but it doesn't answer my question. You just physically don't fit in that space.”
“If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody's there to hear it, does it make sound?”
“...What? What is even—”
“If a guy is in a drawer, and nobody's there to ask edgy topological questions, does he still fit in the drawer?”
Nelmeer sighed and scratched her brow. “Fine. Fit in my drawer.”
“Shh,” he hushed Nelmeer. “I heard something.”
Nelmeer held still, very still. It was quiet here. Almost... too quiet. And then, she heard a groan, a creak, maybe a crack... from the ceiling. Some chalk dust innocently twirled to her desk.
She suddenly recalled that her new desk was one floor below her previous desk. Exactly one floor, breadth and length. As was the large archiver of demolition.
In a burst of speed, Nelmeer leapt from her chair and away from her desk. Moments later, the giant, overweight archiver crashed down through the ceiling, splintering her new desk and new chair with a shriek of power and malice, and throwing chalk and dust everywhere.
Nelmeer coughed, waving away the fog of dust, and rose to her feet again. That archiver didn't have a dent on it. Indestructible, that ancient office furniture.
“That was a close one,” Sleek said, standing next to her.
“What— How'd—” Nelmeer opened her eyes widely in frustration, hopping up and down on her toes. “How'd you get out of my drawer!?”
Sleek rose his eyebrow, and stared at her.
“You know what? frig it. I don't want to know. Um... where are you going?”
“After him,” Sleek said, and climbed on the archiver and leapt for the fresh manhole in the ceiling, pulling himself up. “If I'm quick, I can still catch him!”
°°°
“Feeling better?”
Polce turned up her nose and accepted the glass of water. She smiled gratefully at the drachau.
“Okay, let's take it from the start,” the drachau said, and leaned against the desk. “Why—” A sudden tremor in the floor cut her off, and she looked about alarmedly. “What was that?”
“I'm not sure,” Polce said. “It's probably the guys from the sixth floor. They've been doing weird stuff lately.”
Suddenly, someone with an iron poker and two wooden blocks sprinted past wordlessly.
“Actually, I think maybe that's them,” Polce said, and set her glass aside.
“Stop!” Another man, completely covered in white chalk, ran after the other as fast as he could, spraying a cloud of dust with every step. “In the name of proper administration!”
“Yeah, that's definitely them,” Polce said.
The drachau blinked, took a snap decision, and shoved her coffee into her aide's hands. “Hang on to this for me.”
“Drachau? Where are you—”
“I'm getting to the bottom of this.”
°°°
Sleek panted quickly, skidding to an abrupt halt on the carpet floor, and hid behind the archiver next to the narrow, long corridor. He wasn't new to this complex, and he knew every sideroad and off ramp that even some veterans missed. If he had anticipated correctly, then... A grin formed on his lips when he heard the infiltrator walk down the corridor.
Exactly as planned.
Sleek waited for the perfect moment to stick out his foot and trip the infiltrator, and pressed his back against the archiver. That is when he saw.
The owner of this desk had been slaving away with form management. On his desk was the sixth revision of the administrative lexicon. Sleek recognised the double-sized, obese ledger anywhere; he grabbed it with both hands, waited a beat, and swung wide and hard for the infiltrator's face.
Sleek's arms and shoulders vibrated painfully when the hardcover ledger connected with his victim's face. A leg scuffed loudly on the carpet as it swung high into the air, and the body gracelessly slammed on its back. “Stee-rike!” Sleek shouted as a dozen forms and part of the cover flung into the air.
Sleek swung from behind his cover, grinning to the bystanders as they gathered piecemeal, and dropped his improvised club to the floor. “That's right, ladies and gentlemen. That's how we deal with vandals and saboteurs on this floor. WHAM! Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.”
The five or so people stared back at him; they were shocked, horrified, frightened, and yet morbidly curious. It was creepily silent, other than a low groan and the soft rustle of the carpet as his victim quietly writhed in agony. One woman rushed over, a panicked expression on her face, and kneeled by the squirming body. The chief administrator of the building turned a pale shade of white, rolled his eyes up, and collapsed to the floor like a wet towel. “Yeah, this is what happens when a pro crosses an amateur. Splotch,” Sleek said. “You'll want to remember the name of the man who bested you: it's Sleek. Sleek from Militant Emergency Health Insurance Requisitions. That's right. Remember that name.
“Now, observe as I reveal the identity of this...” He looked down, and cocked his head with a curious frown. “...this woman who never attended our meetings but looks vaguely familiar somehow.” HR, maybe? He looked for a badge on her jacket, but found the thing half a yard down the corridor, blown clean off by the hit. He chuckled, kneeled and picked it up.
“Alright, 'fess up,” Sleek said. “How did you get Virecladep to give you a badge for a drachau, of all people? I mean, how gullible do you think we are?”
The aide, kneeled next to her charge, spared Sleek a brief moment of disbelief while she washed the loose hair from her face. Sleek, in turn, lengthily gazed at the badge.
His smile froze.
Sleek hunched down next to the aide. “Hey, how're you doing? I'm Sleek. Listen, um...” He folded his hands together and pointed to the woman writhing on the floor. “I don't want to die. As someone who is familiar with her eminence, how would you recommend I handle this situation?”
“Get a head start,” the aide said.
“Uh-huh,” Sleek considered. “How fast does she—”
“She hits eighteen miles an hour. Three hundred yard dash.”
“That's, uh, wow,” he said, nodding appreciatively. “You weren't kidding. That's... that's really something.”
“Go,” the aide clearly intoned.
Sleek cleared his throat and carefully put the visitor's badge down on the drachau's blouse. “You didn't see me, okay?”
°°°
“Thank you all for coming,” the chairelfinn, now composed and calm, greets you. “Please, take a seat.”
Nelmeer pats a last speck of chalk from her hair before she sits down. There are only three of you left; that's quite a bit less from when you started.
“Let's start with attendance. Anubis?”
“Oh, come on!” Anleth bursts incredulously.
“Nelmeer?” the chairelfinn ignores her. “Check. Meteor? Check. Calisson? Check. Sleek?”
Silence.
“Sleek?” she tries again.
“Uh, yeah, he went into hiding,” Nelmeer says. “Haven't seen him since.”
Your department head looks inquisitively. “Why is he hiding?”
Mioralynthia walks into the room with a quiet sigh. “Please excuse my tardiness. Someone mistook the city's drachau for our saboteur, and consequently bodyslammed her with a thirty-pound ledger.”
The chairelfinn presses her lips. “I'll just take him off the list.”
_______________
Player list
- Meteor
- Calisson
- Nelmeer
With 3 players,
2 constitute a majority.
Dearly Departed
- Lordanubis (loyal) - Morning 1
- Deroth (protector, loyal) - Evening 1
- Telrunya (loyal) - Night 1
- Drainial (loyal) - Day 2
- Belial (infiltrator) - Evening 3
- Sleekdd (protector, loyal) - Night 3
It is now
Morning. Evening will set on the 15th of April, around 19h UTC. Players who have not posted by then are removed from the game. You may vote, but voting only takes effect in the Evening.
Note: Sleekdd was the infiltrator's actual target. Nelmeer was involved for story's sake, because we know she's loyal.
One infiltrator remains. There are no more protectors.
Good luck!