It is about 60/i>/b/span15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Foxglove and Blackstone/span>/span(Your target and their allies encounter someone who’s been supernaturally influenced into committing a crime for a supernatural. It is up to them to stop the crime and then maybe also try to find the true perpetrator, maybe freeing the thrall from their control in the process.
)

The door jingle-jangles with familiar cheerful jingle, swinging open and allowing the moderately cool air to swirl around, mingling the taste of the sea with the scents of bubble teashop. And yet when it closes again, the second ring is a sour off-key echo, as if the air itself was struggling to keep up.

Someone stumbles in.

They’re’s maybe sixteen, maybe older. Hard to tell beneath the thinness, the jittery posture and sweat-drenched UPS delivery uniform stuck to their frame like a second skin. Their company jacket is unzipped, revealing a sticky mess of boba syrup soaked into the cotton shirt underneath. Ah. A boy. His knuckles are raw. His eyes, wide and overbright, scan the shop like prey expecting teeth in the shadows.

The pastel boba shop is mostly empty at this time. A trio of girls, one in uniform, giggle at a window seat, slurping their drinks and getting ready to head off. A bored boyfriend scrolls at the counter. The chalkboard menu grins above them all.

The boy twitches again in sudden lurch, not a step, and then he’s moving, far too fast, shouldering past a stool and knocking over a laminated chart. A box cutter flashes in his hand, dull and smeared in something bright red and sweet smelling.

“I don’t wanna hurt anyone,” he blurts, voice sloshing over itself like a cup too full, “but she’s so hungry! Gimmie the money in the till!

The boyfriend cashier for the uniformed girls that suddenly freeze up give the best blank ‘i just work here look’ and starts reaching to unload the register. Company policy.

The would-be thief’s other hand is clutching something. A half-crushed takeout drink, lid barely holding on. While he tweaks out there waiting for the registar to HURRY THE FUCK UP, he slams back a swallow from the cup, glittering milky pearly milky pearls glowing with faint pink light even in the full overheads. Theres a pulse to their swirls. Rhythmic. Hypnotic.

What do you do?

Kurt flits his gaze around the room, his seated position in the corner of the cafe giving him a perfect vantage of the ensuing… Robbery? Satire? Confectionary clusterfuck? In any case, it’s no business of his unless one party or another makes it his business. So, watch he does, suit unwrinkled, sheaf of papers in hand.

The teen’s breath rasps through clenched teeth, a thick, syrupy wheeze. His eyes don’t settle. Every eyes reflect every colorful surface of the boba shop, turning into a pastel swirl within his eyes as his knuckles whiten around the box cutter.
someone A girl nearer the sample station lets out a confused laugh. Another takes a step back, her hand halfway to her phone.

Somehow, with his back turned, the robber spins wildly, his limbs jerking as if dragged by puppet strings as he half-jerks, half-lunges, knife outstretched with the liquid on the tip slowly turning brown.

“Don’t call her! She hears it! Every ping, every buzz, it feeds her too!” His voice cracks, wild with something chemically bright.

Behind the counter, a barista freezes. The chalkboard specials loom overhead:
Today’s Favorite – Lychee Dream Pop – Float on a pearl cloud!
The O in cloud has been replaced with a drawn eye, irised in pale pink.

Kurt’s pages flutter in his hand as the air hums. A sudden subharmonic throb rising from the drink in the boy’s hand. Something inside the cup swirls, faster now.

He takes another hit. Or maybe the cup’s drinking him? It doesn’t seem to empty.

The boy snaps his gaze toward Kurt suddenly, like an animal smelling a rival. “You! You’re not bubbling like the rest. What are you?” The box cutter wobbles, frenetic, inhuman speed, but lowering lowering a fraction. “She says… she wants to know.”
someone It seems Kurt’s neutrality has expired.

The teen’s breath rasps through clenched teeth, a thick, syrupy wheeze. His eyes don’t settle. Every eyes reflect every colorful surface of the boba shop, turning into a pastel swirl within his eyes as his knuckles whiten around the box cutter.
someone A girl nearer the sample station lets out a confused laugh. Another takes a step back, her hand halfway to her phone.

Somehow, with his back turned, the robber spins wildly, his limbs jerking as if dragged by puppet strings as he half-jerks, half-lunges, knife outstretched with the liquid on the tip slowly turning brown.

“Don’t call her! She hears it! Every ping, every buzz, it feeds her too!” His voice cracks, wild with something chemically bright.

Behind the counter, a barista freezes. The chalkboard specials loom overhead:
Today’s Favorite – Lychee Dream Pop – Float on a pearl cloud!
The O in cloud has been replaced with a drawn eye, irised in pale pink.

Kurt’s pages flutter in his hand as the air hums. A sudden subharmonic throb rising from the drink in the boy’s hand. Something inside the cup swirls, faster now.

He takes another hit. Or maybe the cup’s drinking him? It doesn’t seem to empty.

The boy snaps his gaze toward Kurt suddenly, like an animal smelling a rival. “You! You’re not bubbling like the rest. What are you?” The box cutter wobbles, frenetic, inhuman speed, but lowering lowering a fraction. “She says… she wants to know.”

It seems Kurt’s neutrality has expired.

The teen’s breath rasps through clenched teeth, a thick, syrupy wheeze. His eyes don’t settle. Every eyes reflect every colorful surface of the boba shop, turning into a pastel swirl within his eyes as his knuckles whiten around the box cutter.

A girl nearer the sample station lets out a confused laugh. Another takes a step back, her hand halfway to her phone.

Somehow, with his back turned, the robber spins wildly, his limbs jerking as if dragged by puppet strings as he half-jerks, half-lunges, knife outstretched with the liquid on the tip slowly turning brown.

“Don’t call her! She hears it! Every ping, every buzz, it feeds her too!” His voice cracks, wild with something chemically bright.

Behind the counter, a barista freezes. The chalkboard specials loom overhead:
Today’s Favorite – Lychee Dream Pop – Float on a pearl cloud!
The O in cloud has been replaced with a drawn eye, irised in pale pink.

Kurt’s pages flutter in his hand as the air hums. A sudden subharmonic throb rising from the drink in the boy’s hand. Something inside the cup swirls, faster now.

He takes another hit. Or maybe the cup’s drinking him? It doesn’t seem to empty.

The boy snaps his gaze toward Kurt suddenly, like an animal smelling a rival. “You! You’re not bubbling like the rest. What are you?” The box cutter wobbles, frenetic, inhuman speed, but lowering lowering a fraction. “She says… she wants to know.”

It seems Kurt’s neutrality has expired.

Kurt lets out a soft sigh, re-adjusting his papers. He takes his time, returning them to the folder from whence they came, and securing it shut with a rubber band. After a few moments of profound disregard, he looks up, meeting the puppeted child’s gaze. “Sit down, boy.” As he speaks, the first two words seem to vibrate with a double-timbre of its own, though only to his ears. With them comes instruction, demand. Rising to his feet, the Vampire paces over, seemingly unafraid of the box cutter, or the one wielding it. “Tell her… That there are worse things in the world than those who sock puppet children who don’t know better.”

The moment hangs thick with tension.

The teenager remains frozen where he stands, eyes wide and shimmering. A faint trail of pink fluid trickles from one nostril. He doesn’t notice. He’s staring at nothing – or everything – jaw slack, caught between voices.

In shaking hand the boba pearls in his cup spasm, twitch, out of rhythm with his own movements, like a bunch of living tadpoles swimming around. And in sympathetic echo, rippling outwards, the boba in their tubs and drinks spasm like an invisible sphere passes through them. The toppings bar gives a soft rattle as plastic lids begin to tremble. Syrup pumps hiss, bubbles forming inside their tubes without being touched.

The barista crouched behind the counter muffles a gasp, clutching the hem of their apron and whispering quick, breathless prayers.

Behind the specials board, the chalk shifts on its own. Letters smear and swirl, forming new ones. No hand touches it.

TASTE ME

The teenager blinks rapidly. He’s sat down. He then slowly lifts his gaze toward Kurt. His voice, when it comes, is a whimper:
“She came in through my straw.”

He shakes there, his blade dipping up, down, around.

Kurt once again emits the softest of sighs, shaking his head. Once again, the odd double-timbre slips into his tone. “Put the knife down.” Settling back, he trails his gaze to the board, clucking his tongue. “Girls, please step out. And…” His eyes seem to glitter faintly as he speaks to the pair, “You will remember all of this as just a very, very strange dream. Go home.”

Shifting his attention back to the sock-puppeted UPS runner, he paces around. Watching. Waiting. Studying all in front of him.

As the words fall from Kurt’s lips, the room seems to tilt slightly, not in motion but in feeling – as though the angle of reality has shifted by half a degree.

The double-timbre carries. Even without the ears to hear it properly, the sound burrows into the soft, animal part of the brain that remembers how to freeze and obey.

The knife drops from nerveless hands to the floor.

The teen’s fingers twitch once, then hang limp at his sides, his chest rising and falling with shallow, rapid breaths. His eyes flutter – not closing, not yet – but dimming, like a socket losing power. The drink remains in one hand, loosely now, the straw tipped sideways and dripping pale nectar to the tiles.

Near the corner, the trio of uniformed girls stare blankly ahead.

Then one of them lets out a dreamy laugh. “Ugh, weirdest nap vibe,” she mumbles, brushing her skirt and ildy straightening it out. Another yawns, confused but unconcerned, and the third checks her phone with a frown like she’s forgotten what she opened it for.

They gather their bags, shoes squeaking faintly as they shuffle toward the door. One of them turns back briefly, blinking at Kurt with a faint hint of recognition. It fades before it finishes forming.

The baristas go back to work, cleaning up, and the man behind the counter stares at the open register with a confused furrow of brow before clacking it closed again.

The ringing bell above the door gives its cheerful ding as they leave.

The specials board quivers as the chalk phrase begins to collapse in on itself. First the word TASTE, then ME, both smearing as though crying through milk. A final trickle of pink drips from the tip of the straw, curling like a question mark onto the linoleum.

The boy’s lips move – not to speak, but as if mouthing something only he hears. A name, maybe, and then he gradually sinks to collapse. If one was a doctor, they’d recognize it as a sugar crash.

The cup feels like it’s watching Kurt.

But for now, things are quiet.

Kurt gazes around the room as things seem to return to a degree of normal. Girls? Gone. Cashier? Confused. Haunted chalk board and boba balls? Back to normal. With a sigh, he crouches down, scooping the recently-possessed UPS driver up and tossing him over his shoulder. Best to get him to a hospital, just in case.