\ Haven:Mist and Shadow Encounterlogs/Ashs Odd Encounter Sr Rachel 240917
Encounterlogs

Ashs Odd Encounter Sr Rachel 240917

Ash, after enduring a series of personal and physical hardships, including a breakup and a failed assault, finds themselves alone in a dense forest, struggling with the aftermath and carrying a rifle. Despite the serene environment surrounding them, the peace is disrupted by the presence of a mysterious entity that mirrors their own feelings of isolation and pursuit. This entity, described through subtle hints of its physical characteristics and the notable denim it wears, chooses to silently follow Ash, maintaining a cautious distance yet undeniably curious or perhaps drawn to Ash's equally cautious movements. This odd interplay of stalking and mutual wariness underscores a shared sense of being outcasts or pursued, setting a tense atmosphere that leaves Ash's fate and intentions intriguingly open-ended.

Meanwhile, Ritsuka experiences her own form of persecution within the normality of her daily routine at her pharmacy. The scenario swiftly shifts from a mundane inventory check to a surreal encounter with a grimy, supernatural entity hiding amongst the shelves. This encounter challenges Ritsuka's perception of her reality, juxtaposing her calm, methodical approach to work against the sudden intrusion of a potentially malevolent force. The confrontation takes a turn when Ritsuka is wrongfully accused by the police of suspicious behavior, instigated by a paranoid customer's claim. Despite the absurdity of the situation, Ritsuka maintains composure, attempting to reason with the officers while simultaneously communicating with the mysterious entity offering cryptic messages. Her experience highlights a struggle between maintaining normality in the face of unexplainable phenomena and societal misunderstanding, concluding with Ritsuka's diplomatic resolution of the confrontation and her serene acceptance of the spirit's presence.
(Ash's odd encounter(SRRachel):SRRachel)

[Mon Sep 16 2024]

In The Forest
Haven's dense forests give way to a meandering dirt road that runs close to the coast. Through the trees to the east, one can just make out the shimmering blue of the ocean. A salty breeze blows through the rustling leaves here, carrying air that is fresh and free of the usual city pollution.

It is dawn, about 52F(11C) degrees,

(A ghost with only fragments of memory that have driven them near insane is attacking your target. They must either defeat it or find a way to calm it down.
)
Ash wriggles out of the bag over their head, pulling free of the loosened rope, only to find... nothing. No one. The Syndicate stabbed their neck, dropped them in a cell for half an hour, no one bought them, no one saved them, there was no way out, and they'd screamed and kicked and bruised themself until they were sore. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And now, they were on a shitty little rode in the middle of the fucking forest, with nothing to show for their suffering but the memory of a dark cell, and a discarded pair of fancy jeans. This is after their boyfriend broke up with them, and they fucked up the assault on their former cult leader.

Ash is not in a great mood, and has a rifle on hand. Something wicked this way comes.

Ash wriggles out of the bag over their head, pulling free of the loosened rope, only to find... nothing. No one. The Syndicate stabbed their neck, dropped them in a cell for half an hour, no one bought them, no one saved them, there was no way out, and they'd screamed and kicked and bruised themself until they were sore. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And now, they were on a shitty little rode in the middle of the fucking forest, with nothing to show for their suffering but the memory of a dark cell, and a discarded pair of fancy jeans. This is after their boyfriend broke up with them, and they fucked up the assault on their former cult leader.

Ash is not in a great mood, and has a rifle on hand. Something wicked this way comes. (In case of reset shenanigans)

The forest around Ash is an unsettling calm. There's little light filtering through the canopies, as dense as they are. The wind is still, the branches lean closer -- and all of a sudden, as if they're stuck in a movie, a 'caw' breaks the silence. Of course, just as always, there's nothing there.

Utter stillness again.

No one has come for Ash -- and it seems no one will. They'll have to make it back to town, all on their lonesome, without a car, without a bike, and without, it seems, the company of their lover.

The cold makes itself known, outside of just the loneliness. The summer has yielded to autumn, and so perhaps it isn't a surprise that the temperature seems to be chill. What would pose an oddity, though, is the fact that it's starting to plummet. Maybe it's Ash's proximity to the water. The brine is strong in the air.

No, that's not right. Something is in the shadows. It's moving. A branch breaks, here and there. A rustle comes from the bushes. Could be an animal, of course, but no animal is as large as that. They seem to be tall - taller than Ash, at the very least. If they pay attention, they might glimpse a flash of white, near the ground. Then, blue. Denim, maybe, by the fray of the pants that can be found between tree trunks. Whomever this is, they're skittish, and don't want to make themselves known. They're just doing a poor job of it.

"..."

"..."

"..."

There's a pair of eyes staring at them, yellowish, bloodshot.

They might have seen that Ash is carrying a gun. It doesn't inspire the confidence to approach. What they do do, though, is doggedly follow in their footsteps. Every time Ash takes one, they do, too, only stopping when there isn't cover to hide behind.

It turns out, Ash doesn't even have the luxury of peace.

Closer, closer, closer...

Closer, still.

If whomever this is is looking for trouble, they'll be able to grab at them, soon, if they aren't paying close enough attention to riposte.

(Your target has been cursed with persecution, it is up to them to survive a world suddenly turned hostile until their allies can come and help get them to safety or deal with the curse.
)
Ritsuka is working at the pharmacy she owns. She is looking through the sortiment with a piece of paper, clipboard and a pen writing onto it as she plans on what is intended to be sold at the pharmacy and might still need to be produced upstairs at the laboratory. It is still in the morning and she keeps away from other staff or customers. She has a lightness to her step, though wears a coat over herself as if she was feeling rather cold.

Silence reigns over the store as Ritsuka goes about her business in the pharmacy, little to indicate anything is wrong in the quiet early hours of the morning with the occasional customer passing by but grabbing what they need and continuing on their way without quesiton or query for Ritsuka. Clipboard in hand Ritsuka traverses down the isles, her reflection perceptible but barely of consequence as she passes a column of bottled supplments, but from the corner of her eyes something moves an entirely different direction in the otherwise empty aisle.

Ritsuka glances up for a moment to the empty aisle. It is with little immediate concern to see what it was, though her pen does touch upon the page and she writes in Japanese on it that is then followed by the word Sertraline. It is perhaps a little rough in script, as her eyes are, for a moment, really not on the page at all.

And indeed, the aisle is empty. The only shadows those between the shelves behind the gleaming glass and bright plastics of various products all competing to be the next best and biggest thing in personal healthcare. A bastion of mankinds consumerism and defiance of the natural order of things between the antibiotics for disease and the price tags attached so someone somewhere can profit off the suffering, or at least offering cures for it. Not a customer in sight, and even the counters don't seem to be blipping as items scan in the distance. In fact, there's no other staff around either, nothing, save for a pair of grubby, grimy hands with overlong fingernails wrapped around the supplements from the shadows of the shelves. Beady yellow eyes glow from the darkness, fixed upon Ritsuka.

"Funny that," Ritsuka quietly says, turning back to the clipboard to write down on the next line below, making another Japanese symbol, writing downwards before writing 'Abilify' besides the last japanese character. "Adding something for Shizophrenia will probably help. If alone to make excuses sometimes. Maybe add a Euphoria and something far more terrible to the more exclusive sortiment in the vaccination section. Now where did all the staff go?" She glances back to the counter and just lets out a sigh before she turns back to the yellow eyes, saying while in the process of turning "Can we help you, sir or madam?"

Whatever entity it is that exists within the shadows of the shelves, looking out at Ritsuka, it stays eerily still and utterly as Ritsuka turns to meet it's gaze. Eyelids as dark as the shadows themselves momentarily hide the eyes in a blink, and then the slits of those pupils meet Ritsuka from behind a row of vitaboitics gut health tablets. The grimy fingers unwrap from around a bottle, a finger with skin of a mould green complexion pointing it's talon slowly at Ritsuka as a rasping whisper emenates into the back of Ritsuka's mind. "Nature suffers for man. So too must you suffer from man." It whispers, then just as suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the store is bustling again and the creature whatever it was seems gone.

Ritsuka gives it a blank stare when it disappears. Her chest raises, taking in a deep breathe before she heads on to the stairwall, past the bathrooms to get on to the upstairs area, which first means stepping into the decomination chamber. The laboratories behind it are, as of right now, largely empty of staff with the laboratory being set up a new and properly from the prior ownership. "Funny that," She repeats the same two words she used before. Thinking out loud, she, for her own mumbles "The Kami did advise. We do what must be done. If the world deems us monsters, so be it. If I have to be a monster, so be it, if I have to destroy monsters, so be it. Care less what others think-" And then the last word is said far more fondly "-gentle one." It draws her to smile sweet.

Then she reaches around for her phone, swiping away the screen lock and opening her contacts to send a message to someone.

With Ritsuka moving so quickly to a place of relative shelter and quiet from human kind, there's little opportunity for much more to happen than a couple suspicious side-eyes sent Ritsuka's way, as though the little lady working her own store were some suspicious individual. Then Ritsuka is in the relative quiet of her lab and able to send a text. The silence is short lived though, a loud knock sounding from downstairs. And then another. Three knocks each time, loud and demanding access to the back areas where Ritsuka is. "OPEN UP! We know you're in there! You're not getting away with this." An angry masculine voice demands.

Ritsuka writes another text message on her phone, this time not checking if it is sent before she slides her phone into a pocket and she turns around. She calls back, with a light accent "Please forgive me sir, this area is off-limits." She does take a moment to turn around to look at the door.

"OPEN UP or we're coming in!" The voice at the door repeats, authoratitive and stern. "We've reports of a suspicious person entering the back areas!... Ralph, can you get someone with a keycard to open the door?" It continues, Ritsuka's solitary time back here potentially drawing to a close soon it seems.

Ritsuka rolls her eyes, and then begins to slowly make her way down. She does take a brief look at her phone to look at the familiar message, and then reaches around to try at her communicator with the order. She, for her own still looks calm. She for her own does hold the communicator with the order ready, just in case this turns to trouble.

She then unlocks and opens the door. "Sir, can you elaborate on 'suspicious person'? We are working hard on producing pharmaceuticals that are in agreement with ethical standards and our affiliation demands that we do so in agreement to green energy and zero harm to any biodiversity." She leans to what might account more as corporate talk, naturally. This however does come with trying to meet the eyes of the first person that she sees and trying to influence them, subtly.

The moment the latch on the door is undone a burly police officer barges through, Ritsuka potentially being knocked back by the door unless they are quick enough to get out of the way or strong enough to resist it. The man already has cuffs in hand, though whether it be by virtue of what Ritsuka says alone or the added psychic persuasion he stops halfway through raising them up. "The fuck are you on about lady. You were seen skulking about the aisles, and acting suspiciously. Police were called. Now I'm here." He answers brusquely, the door left open with an overweight blonde woman staring into the room with an air of superiority. "That's her officer!" She insists, voice shrill. "I saw her eying up all the staff, sizing up the customers. She's definitely casing up the place. You've caught her just in time no doubt if she got into the back areas." The policeman turns back to Ritsuka, cuffs still at the ready. "Given you're in the back areas out of public access, we've probable cause to believe you were planning to rob the place. If you put your hands behind your back, we can do this easily and painlessly." He grunts.

Ritsuka gives them a stare, but she is both dexterous enough and quick to respond to not get knocked back "Biolabs Pharmaceuticals is my property, and you are trespassing. You have your devices to verify this, do you not?" She keeps her eyes on the man, still trying to persuade before her eyes turn to the woman, "I'm sorry madam, but I think you are not okay. Do you need help?" She then however does speak into her communicator with the order "Ohayo - I'm not sure but I think someone is trying to kidnap me and put me into a cell from my own pharmacy." It is loud enough to be heard by those in the stairwell. Being quick, she then does reach down and holds up her own keycard with which she accessed the lock on her own, though the lock is still very simply. "I intend to add a lot more security to the lock next week, retina and fingerprint scanner, for example."

"She stole it!" The woman proclaims from behind the police officer, huffing a straigned breath as the officer himself now looks to be trapped in a cage of his own vanity. Having declared his belief of the woman behind him, even the evidence Ritsuka presents to him, his pride refuses to accept it. Rather than accept his own inadequacy he continues on in this farce in which Ritsuka finds herself persecuted by a perfect stranger, and he is the instrument of her injustice. In a corner above the doorway is a darkened shadow, two yellow eyes looking on from it as the man turns in red in the face and yells. "GET YOUR HANDS ON THE WALL NOW!" His hand goes to his radio. "One-Zero this is one-three. I have a perp resisting arrest at Biolabs pharmaceuticals. Send backup, over."

"I suppose I will be suing your department for a lot of money," Ritsuka quietly answers to the police officer, though her eyes sway to the entity above the door and she smiles "It is good to protect nature, but I'm not the right person, entity-sama." This would perhaps look delusional to the officer and the woman, not sane in mind. "I live outside the city and keep shrines to the Kami. A Yokai ghost visited me a few days ago." She does not say a single lie, of course and then looks back to the police officer and then the woman.

Ritsuka then takes a few steps back, as if to invite the people to follow in after herself and her eyes grow more analytical over the police officer. "I do not wish you to be in trouble, sir, but if you do not back off, it will become very troublesome. Sumimasen." She makes the faintest bow to the officer.

Indeed, the people in front of Ritsuka look baffled, the policeman running out of breath as he finds himself neither heavily resisted or complied with. A low purr sounds in the back of Ritsuka's mind, the eyes in the shadow slow blinking as whatever entity it is up there hears what Ritsuka says. "Promises?" Sounds out in that low growl in the back of Ritsuka's mind.

Ritsuka looks back to the entity, and she makes a, followed by a deep and respectful bow. "Hai, it is promises. If you would like you can come and visit? You might like it very much! It is very quiet and the Yokai left a gift for me, and I keep it somewhere special." Though the officer and the woman might really just think she is talking mad and that the bow is directed their way. ""

Amidst all the blustering and posturing going on before Ritsuka another policeman arrives, presumably Ralph to whom the first policeman had been yelling. "What are you yelling at?" The man asks of his red faced partner, a hand held up to the screeching accusatory woman behind the door as the two policemen begin to converse throughout the monologue Ritsuka has internally with this spirit. "It likes -plants-." The spirit speaks to Ritsuka, the voice coming through in her mind even as it refers to itself in third person.

Ritsuka straightens again, and her eyes sway away from the woman and the police. "How would you feel about if I spend this week to decorate some plants to this building here- do you have a favorite flower or plant? I am caring for some bamboo in the courtyard and could add some more, but I think the heart of my home would be prettier if I added something to welcome you home, too? It is a shrine after all."

"It likes Yadorigi." The creature answers, the whispers in the back of Ritsuka's mind becoming an appreciative croon. Another slow blink, and the hands appear from the shadow once more, this time pointing to the policemen down below. The red faced policeman gawps as his partner berates him to the sound of the blond woman's self-righteous ranting being ignored behind them. Eventually the new officer looks to Ritsuka and says. "Terribly sorry for wasting your time ma'am. My colleague is new, and will be spoken with later." Then he looks to the blonde. "Madam, records show this is the third time this month you've made a call out to the police that could be viewed as discriminatory. I'll need you to leave the premises or face a fine for wasting police time."

Ritsuka smiles sweet "I will go home and plant a tree in the garden, and maybe find out how I can get one-" It is only when one of the police officers addresses her that she dwells back to the here and now, and she makes a bow to them. "Not a problem, Sumimasen for helping us sort this out, sir." When she straightens, her eyes look for the spirit, whether she see it or not, it says "Yadorigi will be very liked by birds, I am so grateful Kami and spirits are helping me make my home so much better."

For a moment longer, the spirit looks back at Ritsuka from the shadows, the two policemen withdrawing away with the door closing behind them. The next time Ritsuka blinks, the spirit is gone.

When Ritsuka notices the spirit gone, she bows again to where she had last seen it. "I apologize for leaving first, I will go home and take care about it now. Thank you for coming." When she straightens, she does move to leave out of the door, and then to get home.