Agent Hawkins had located what appeared to be the supposed magical girl near the entrance to the local mall. He kept his distance, obscuring himself besides a tree, obscuring himself in the shade. His keen "eyes" for lack of a better word, noticed that she was speaking to a small female, about the size of a doll riding on her shoulder. Interesting...
He needed to find out more about these girls. Figure out what role they were playing in all this. What they KNEW about all this. And whether or not their goals could be.. assisted with.
He was unsure of how feasible directly contacting the children immediately would be. They probably would be quite wary of some new shadowy entity taking an interest in their mission. Moreover, they were still children, and it was a little shady to pursue them while they were on their own.
Hawkins made a snide chuckle as he recalled his partner remarking about what she felt was hilarious, basically a living visual-representation of "Stranger Danger" trying to chat up little girls in the middle of public. He'd have to take this slowly.
Hawkins followed her in, shifting and sliding from alcove to alcove. He had long ago discovered he had a "talent" for slipping by people, bot only by being good at hiding, but somehow slipping by their primary senses or initial recognition.
Speaking of which...
Hawkins "eyebrow" raised when he almost lost sight of the child for a second, as though his vision had wandered away. That was very unusual for him nowadays to lose track of something, even for a second. The brow raised even higher when he realized that no one, not a single person seemed to a knowledge the presence of the child and her companion. So she had an ability similar to his own. Curiouser and curiouser.
The child was searching for something, likely she was investigating another possible "event", or something related to it. But he noted the sidelong glances at families, children playing, and general.. life going on. Hmm.
Hawkins followed, focusing his "hidden-ness" while subconsciously turning up the collar on his gray trenchcoat. The color of it seemed to darken, and his edge grew fuzzier, indistinct.
Wait... The girl had stopped. Had she found what she was looking for? He couldn't see anything. Hold on. A bit of a.. blur... Hawkins focused his eyes on the indistinctness. His intuition, his extrodinary senses.. they were straining to take in this new information.
And then he saw it. "My god..."
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Agent Cecilia Pennsbrook had recently just returned to her body, after exploring the "local" internet and scoping out potential hot spots of information, long with other distractions. She chuckled. Weeks after the very concept of the human race gets chewed up and spit onto the sidewalk, and people were still uploading videos of cats doing "wacky things".
She stood up from her chair int he hotel room, stretching her synthetic muscles. Cecilia was a gynoid, but not like the typical model. She wasn't the "skinjob" looking type, peach synthoid skin with the eyes and ears being the most obvious tell, instead she was obviously mechanical from the second you saw her.
She was of average height, erring on the short side, and she was covered in a white and shiny synthetic "skin", like a durable looking mix of metal and plastic. Along her more active parts and joints was a darker gray padding, such as on her elbows or the joints of her hand. All along her body were dashes and streaks of red, and hot-pink, for all intents and purposes they were like paint decals. He synthetic hair was a shiny metallic purple, as were her eyes. Her proportions were normal for a woman, but her body had basically nothing to hide. Here "personal areas" were just smooth metal-plastic.
She had taken to wearing absolutely nothing, giving the meager excuse that "it made her processors overheat", but the fact was that she was proud of her new body, and had grown rather fond of showing it off. She had a smart looking dress-suit though for when "professionalism" called to ruin her fun.
She smirked, thinking about how comically professional her partner could be. Oh sure on the surface he was all secrets and steely looks...
Oh yeah! That reminded her, when she got back she was going to check up on aby news from the police side of things. She blinked her camera eyes, and she had a basic connection up. She checked her phone messages, ah... Her contact from the police station had called.
Cecilia remembered to give Hawkins her analysis of the box-bomb-thing when he got back from his anime-hunt. She still had to laugh at that part. Magical girls! What next, a bunch of power rangers running around?
She listened to the message still grinning, until a nugget of information sent her blanching. Hoo boy.
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Four tried to steel her nerves as the shadow dog growled and paced outside the stall. She didn;t feel like it was working much.
"C'mon Jenny! You gotta do this! It's part of your whole job here!"
Jenny gripped her weapon. "I know Tetra! Just.. just gimme a second!"
Tetra folder her ears back. "Well you're running out of seconds really quick!" The beast was clawing at the door now.
A sudden sound two stalls down distracted both of them from their train of thought.
+++++++++++++
The shadow dog snarled as it scratched at the stall door. It was hungry. Starving. This strange place had little food, it barely managed to get by feeding off of the living things here, and then it had gotten a sniff of this new source. Brimming with food, it NEEDED to catch this little screamey thing.
It was about to begin pounding it's full force against the door when a loud "SLAM" echoed out from a stall further away in the bathroom. The dog paused, sniffing the air. He smelled more food, but this was different... strange.
It cautiously moved closer to the new stall, sniffing up the new smell more and more.
It stopped sniffing when the stall door slammed hard into its face.
++++++++++++++
Jenny and Tetra sat in confused silence as whatever had made that sound got the beast's attention. Jenny thought maybe now she could send it back quickly if she could catch it by surprise.
She gripped her weapon and opened the door a teeny smidge, peering out. The dog was padding closer and closer into the stall that the noise had come from. It looked strangely dark in there.. like the light above it had gone out.
That's when the door slammed into the shadow dog's face, kicked outwards by long dark leg.
Jenny and Tetra stared wide eyed in surprise as some weird shadowy man leaped out of the stall, picked up the dog and slammed it into the ground. He ran up the girls, holding out his hand and shouting quickly. "Come with me! QUICKLY!"
Jenny was too shocked by this turn of events to disagree as she took the man's gloved hand, and was surprised as he quickly swept her up in his arms, carrying her as he ran out of the bathroom.
The dark man ran through the mall, dodging every person and article without a single misstep. All along the way Tetra, who had more of her wits, fussed and argued, demanding to know what was going on.
He had reached the westward entrance of the mall, the one leading out to the tiered parking area, and nearly broke the door down with his foot. He dashed into the middle of the car park and set Jenny down, leaving a firm hand on her shoulder.
He spoke in a clear, urgent voice. "My name is Nathan Hawkins, and what you really need to know right now is that I want to help you. But first..." He looked back towards the mall entrance. Looking to see if the dog was in pursuit. "I need to know how I can."
