Eris Jones's Story

Eris saluted, only half-sarcastically. "I will follow your lead, boss." She wondered, though, who exactly classified as a "weirdo"? She wouldn't call either of them normal, but it wouldn't be too hard just to follow orders and keep her mouth shut, right? ..... right? Grimacing to herself behind Molyneux' back, she resolved to at least talk a bit less and ignore strangers. Mostly ignore strangers?

Yeah this was going to work out well.

Eris followed Molyneux out the door, listening carefully. "Sounds like a good cause, especially if the child has any obvious demon traits. What kind of demon is it?"

It was dark outside, but Eris' vision adjusted easily enough. The moon was a slim crescent, deepening the shadows between streetlights and garish store signs. The streets were fairly busy, but once they got on the subway and off again in an unfamiliar section of town, it was much quieter. There were still street lights, but instead of shops there were small houses. The Japanese suburbs, she supposed, row after row of houses that were largely similar. Here and there a few people walked down the sidewalks, giving stray glances to the strangers, but it was a stark contrast from the bustle of the area around the bar.

The hairs on Eris' neck stood straight up. She wasn't used to the thick almost-silence of the neighborhood surrounding them, and it was making her paranoid. She trusted her instincts, but she also knew that her instincts naturally distrusted areas when what her idea of "normal" background noise was absent. But, she thought as she delicately sniffed, it also might be that there were quite a few demons in the general vicinity, and that hadn't usually meant good things for her in the past.

Eris smiled faintly, taking his words at face value. "True. Although I would hope most demons would hesitate to take a child, I know that could be naive."

She scoffed. "Sure, I'll try that, but I warn you, I'm not really used to socializing with women, I've typically had male friends."

Walking up to the door, she knocked politely. A woman, appearing human other than the smell of what Eris could only label some kind of canine, appeared as the door opened to reveal her face and a small portion of her body. Her eyes were red and swollen with tears, overwhelming her small face. No bigger than Eris herself, which didn't mean much when it came to demons, she still looked helpless.

"Hello?" She said, her voice wavering and thin."Who are you?"

"Good evening," Eris said, trying for a reassuring smile--no teeth as a matter of course, attempting to go for as friendly as a horned girl could. "We've been sent to see if we can do anything to help," she looked down the street, assuming that even in a largely demon neighborhood there might be interfering mortal ears.

"Oh." The woman looked uncertain, examining them, and reluctantly opened the door wider. "Come in."

Eris walked in, taking off her shoes in the entryway and stepping up onto the floor in her socks, following the woman to a small living room. The house was well furnished and coordinated, almost as if from a magazine, with details here and there that pointed towards an affluent family.

"I'm Eris Jones, and you are?" She left Molyneux to introduce himself. Or not, as she was unsure how he usually handled these situations.

"Ahhh," the woman looked discomfited. "I'm Mrs. Kobayashi."

"I realize this is a difficult situation, but we need to know as much as we can about what happened if we are to help you find your child. Could you tell us what happened, from the beginning, please?"

Mrs. Kobayashi shifted in her seat. "This morning I took my daughter to school. Natsuko, that's her name, but we call her Suki. And I..." her voice trailed off as she wiped her eyes with a wad of tissues clenched in her other hand, sniffling a little, but managing to hold herself together. "After school, I picked her up, and we went for a run. There's a patch of woods not too far from here, and, well, with our young it's best that they get a run in as much as possible. It helps them keep from, well, changing anything. And we were in the woods, and we were there longer than I'd planned, and it was getting dark, but she was having so much fun, and I..." she caught her breath on a sob, "I wanted her to have a bit of fun before she started on her homework. She has a lot more this year and I hate to see her cooped up inside too long." She covered her mouth, fighting sobs again.

"We understand," Eris soothed. It's completely understandable."

Mrs. Kobayashi collected herself and went on. "We were heading back towards the car, when all of a sudden, Suki disappeared. I thought she'd just gone behind the trees, so I went to look, but she was just ... gone. And I searched and searched for her scent trail, but I was never trained, and it was hours before my mate came, and--" she breathed in, shakily, covering her face again. A man came out of the back, his clothes in disorder.

"I've searched and searched," he said wearily. "I can't find anything." He looked suspiciously at the strangers, with an edge of resentment. "And I don't know that the Council," he spat out, "can do anything at all to help us."

Eris smiled again, trying for sincere. "We will do our best, sir. We are highly motivated to find your daughter, and as quickly as possible. Do you have anything with her scent on it, a strong one?"

He sneered. "If I couldn't find her trail, I highly doubt you can, whatever you are." His wife caught his arm, and he acquiesced to her pleading glare. He left for a moment, and returned with her backpack.

"This should do it." Tossing it at her, he returned to his wife's side. Whatever mates meant in this particular type of werewolf demon, it seemed to be a deep connection. From her reading, however, it did not mean a mystical connection of any sort that might extend to children, giving them another way to track lost loved ones, which was unfortunate.

Eris took a deep sniff. She wasn't trained in tracking, not really, but she'd followed scent before. It had even saved her life a few times, so she was unwilling to skip even the smallest advantage they might have in their pursuit of the child. Poor thing.

Eris said her goodbyes as quickly as she could, tearing herself away from the mother's regret and the quiet but ever-growing anger of the father. She felt a bit disillusioned as she put her shoes back on again and went out the door towards Molyneux. This was a community that was at least, from her guess, half something other than human. Did they not care at all that the child was gone, was it a matter of indifference to them, or had their utter helplessness kept them hidden away?

She knew she could be overstating the case, but weren't there demons in their community that could have helped to start tracking the child? There were a wide range of demons, judging by what she'd managed to gather from her book so far, that had abilities that lent themselves well to finding humans, one way or another. Some by scent, or sight, or an aura of energy. Was their fear of being discovered so strong that they would let a child die?

Eris paused at Molyneux' side. Then again, perhaps the chasm between demon species was too great for cooperation, or the kind of demon the child was had inspired hate or fear from those around them. They hadn't seem dangerous to her, but again and again Eris was confronted with her own ignorance in the world she know inhabited. Yet again she admonished herself to read and remember the book she'd been given, a kindness she would not forget.

"I don't precisely know where to start, but if the wind is right and the child is somewhere not too far, I might be able to catch her scent. I'm not sure what kind of demons they are, but I'm willing to check the forest if you are, for lack of a better lead. But you have more experience in working for the Council, and with demon types, do you have any ideas?

She hoped against hope that Molyneux knew what to do, because otherwise she felt like she was flying blind. She wasn't averse to banging on some doors and questioning neighbors, but the attitude of the area seemed more forbidding than friendly, and the first 24 hours of a disappearance--if television was anything to go by--was crucial. And a demon child, a potentially hungry one, would be a danger to them all. A small part of her, small but insistent, believed that if a few kidnappers, human or otherwise, died to feed a demon child that would be no loss, but she quieted it, as she had been attempting to do for all of her other demonic impulses. Those voices were only growing louder, alas, but the distraction of the bar and the book, as well as this case, were helping in that fight.

"Could you tell what kind of demons they were? That could help us find the child."