Nosy People Being Bored Leads to Secrets Being Sniffed Out
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“It’s a bit cold to just be wandering around like this, isn’t it?” Mick asked, as they wandered around.
“We’re not wandering around,” Cal disagreed, though they were, a little bit. “We’re looking for something.”
“We don’t seem to be doing a very good job finding it.” Wes didn’t seem cold, though of course he still had fur no matter what the illusion charm he had on looked like. “What is it that we’re looking for again?”
“Secrets.” Cal looked around the half-empty street. There was nothing here but storefronts and snow and some people. “We’re stuck here for a while longer, and I’m bored as fuck, so I want to find secrets. Big cities always have secrets. Like, haunted houses or mysterious disappearances or towers without doors or hidden caverns under the magistrate’s house or something. You know, secrets.”
“Because what?” asked Sully. Travis and Joey had stayed at the manor to wrestle, but he’d opted to come with. “Poking around random shit hasn’t caused you enough fucking problems in your life?”
“Poking around random shit has gotten me where I am today.”
“My point exactly?”
“I have five awesome boyfriends who love me, a solid team, a good amount of money and a strong reputation in my field, all adding up to a successful career that I love, I work for the prince of Dolovai, and whenever anything important happens, everyone waits to hear my opinion on it.” Cal shrugged. “My life is going pretty well.”
“Half the world wants to kill you and the other half only doesn’t because they don’t know about you yet.”
“Exactly, so I should cut the suspense and just introduce myself to them,” Cal said, picking up speed, then dropping it again because they weren’t really going anywhere in particular. “You lived in Pelican Bay for a while, you must know about secrets, right?”
“I was looking for Klaus, not hidden doors and trap windows,” Sully pointed out.
“You must have heard stuff, though,” Wes pressed.
“He did kind of suck at getting information, though…”
“Hey.” Sully glared at Wes and Mick. “That shit doesn’t work on me. I’m not going to suddenly just start humouring Cal because you two are harassing me.”
“Nah, you’re going to start humouring Cal because you love him, want to impress him and are hoping he’ll give you head tonight.”
“He will anyway, though,” Arky muttered quietly.
Sully was quiet for a good minute while they walked. “Okay, whatever.” He let out a dramatic sigh, to make clear he was under duress. “People say the guy who runs the sea monster museum is a merman in disguise.”
“Where’s he from?” Cal asked.
“White Cape, supposedly.”
Cal shook his head. “They’re just mad he’s not from Pelican Bay. Next.”
“Uh…there are secret tunnels under the Shell District where someone buried pirate gold back in the day?”
“How do people in the Shell District feel about those rumours?” That was the poorest part of the city.
Sully shrugged. “From what I could tell, they think it’s stupid.”
“Hm.” Cal thought about it. “Worth looking into, but it’s most likely something that got made up so everyone else wouldn’t have to feel bad about not helping poor people. Next.”
“Saint Lyra’s Cathedral is haunted.”
“The big one?”
Sully nodded. “That’s what they say.”
“Lots of cathedrals are haunted,” Mick pointed out.
“Yeah, it’s not unusual,” Cal agreed. “A dead priest or something.”
“A toddler, actually,” Sully said. “He runs through the pews giggling in the middle of the night. A bunch of people have heard him.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a secret,” Cal protested. “Though it is weird for a child’s spirit to be attached to a church. Next.” He didn’t think he could handle getting emotionally attached to another ghost boy.
“There’s a locked building in the naval base that nobody’s allowed in,” Sully said, sounding like he was wracking his memory now. “They say even the admiral doesn’t know what’s in there.”
“Now, that sounds interesting,” Cal said. “You guys want to break into a naval base?”
“And get arrested?” Mick asked.
“I think Gavin’s last name would let us get away with it. What else, Sully?”
“Well…there’s a restaurant that if you go there and order the squid, someone come and ushers you out of the room and then you’re never seen again.”
“That sounds like regular organized crime,” Cal decided. “Let’s do the naval base. And we’ll look into the ghost in the cathedral and the tunnels, I think. Just in case there’s anything to either of them.” Cal changed directions.
“What, right now?” Sully asked.
“Obviously not right now,” Mick assured him. “We have to head back to the house and plan. And get all the others too. We won’t do anything until tomorrow.”
“Also,” said Wes, “we should go to the sea monster museum before we leave. Not for the guy who owns it or whatever. I just think it sounds cool.”
“Yeah, it does,” Mick agreed. “Travis and Joey would probably like it a lot.”
Cal had a feeling Mick would also like it a lot. Wes wasn’t much of a museums guy, so it was nice of him to suggest that. “Okay. We can do that too. We have lots of time. Especially if Gavin gets his whole weird portal network set up; we can come back whenever we want.”
“Have we ever broken into anywhere as heavily defended as a naval base?” Wes wondered while they walked. “Maybe that keep out east.”
There had been an awful lot of empty suits of armour guarding that keep. “I have a feeling this will be a bit more intense,” Cal said.
“I once assaulted a flying ice castle,” Sully said. “I don’t think this’ll be as hard as that.”
“We’re not assaulting, we’re breaking in.” Mick wagged his finger at Sully like a teacher. “It’s very different. No explosions.”
“No promises.”
“Tying you and Joey together,” Wes told him. “You know who’s going to be useful? Travis.”
“Yeah, his whole blending into shit power is going to help a lot,” Cal agreed. “And you, with your occasional lack of respect for the solidity of walls.”
“I never really respected the solidity of walls before,” Wes mused. “Now I just don’t have to knock them over is all.”
“You know,” said Mick, tapping his finger on his thigh as he walked. “This might sound nuts, but we should see if Darby wants to tag along. A wolf’s sense of smell might be useful.”
“Plus he’s clearly bored in the house,” Cal added. He spent a lot of time wrestling with Joey and a lot more time in his room with Greg, but when he wasn’t doing those things, he tended to aimlessly follow the knights around. “Yeah, let’s bring him if his dads say it’s okay.”
“I swear to you, if we all die because of this, I’m converting to a better religion,” Sully muttered.
“How could there possibly be a better religion than the one where the god gives you head at night?” Cal asked.
“I guess you do have a point with that…”
Cal had never really been as bored as he’d pretended to be. How could he? But even if he had been, it seemed like that had gone and fixed itself.
This should be fun, he thought.
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How Best to Use a Sword 