"Yup, this has been the most productive time I have ever had in between moments." Curiosity claps clouding ashes all directions over everything. The humans here was flat passed out on the desk. The monarch himself was soulless, taking a final look upon Curiosity before that clay body fell apart to ash. The soul swiftly transfered to hell, pulled down by the sin and drag of those seeking pay back. The immediate surrounding was spiritless but for Curiosity. He takes a seat at her side and began filling out a form on her behalf. She blinked a lot with trying to fathom what just happened.
"The new queen upon the throne back home had sent me to get rid of him. He was failing basic rules and, more importantly, was my last chance test. Undertaker kingdoms rise and fall just as pockets between realms are made and lost. There hasn't been a lasting dynasty and nor will these ever be in how we work. This loose system is just the house of cards we set to break down alongside changing human living realm. I think it's worked out that every 100 years of your living realm, we have raised to a peak and crashed to ash. We do things that changes what sort of departments needed as the new decades roll altered changes." He goes through it as he finished it. He sits up with a waving through the pages again and flops it among a pile of other approved forms, "You don't know nor will you remember, but you have already been a supportive ally outside of all the known systems. You have not gone unnoticed by many undertakers and minor gods of many worlds and realms. I hope that I can return the favour for you getting out of many sticky situations while being on this side of the pond." He smiles thin and a soft one hand greeting, "It's always been interesting insight seeing you, Miss Tricky." She is most definitely never heard of anyone calling her that in this lifetime before. But in a tight knot in her chest, there a nostalgic ringing echo made in her mind. Of many voices calling her this and the many situations. She had even got so lost of her memories that scars acted of when the most painful times happened around when someone called her that. There was also no point of denying that she knows him from other places and that his hurt her to dire situations. But his right that these are vague recall of things, she can hear things but images and even a slight muffle of not understanding everything.
He tilts interested in her human expression, enjoying that she the most on the shelves of everything she was feeling then she had been ever before. Rather he had been making notes of the things she reacted to with what expressions, as a back up for when she does eventually harden into a stoney figure he worked with before. He can't help but admire her acting talent and self control in the most heart retching moments. As he is looked upon her, he can see the little girl she always has been when others have mistake for an inhumane monster. Even her human past here in America has had echos of this. But she turly is human at soul, even as events happen that change her. The core of her will had never. This was what many people who been saved by her feel, admiration for that strong spirit.
She looked away from his icy eyes with a slight blush she wanted to hide. She not even sure what she blushing over, only then that nickname has striked some new emotions she didn't know she had. She jolts as someone human slams a ton of stuff over the desk which woke up those sitting here.
"We didn't come here to sleep on the job. I know the jet lag is not helping but we have recruits to grab. We have only this small window of chances to take cursed sight people before the illness strikes the good ones." Groans of most humans sitting up and some pouts of empty coffee cups.
"Your going to be alright." She bumbbled those words in not meaning to say them. Her eyes not only looking about the uniform but also at the small luck manifestations. A mix of good and bad omens ridding their shoulder and head. Some strange ones she never seen before, "You must fear spiders or something fluffy." She tries to comprehend what these things are, "Mr Curiosity. Is there a study book for dream and between creatures?" She turned and his gone and she frowns in being alone.
"Curiosity..." The lady ponders, "Oh that's the undertaker that keeps sending us good eggs. You must be very special if he got you here himself." She softly mutters with twist, "You know what happened to the king?"
"I am more confused in asking what side of undertakers are we even talking about? I don't know politics." The lady chuckles at this.
"Since your coming with us, would help getting everyone a coffee? You seem like a local that knows stuff." She softly got down from the chair and looked about at reflections and in voiding around piles of ashes. She really didn't want to walk on them. The lady looks worried of this odd fashion of avoiding unseen stuff but sighed glad it was just for that part. The little girl pointed a little direction and the lady tilts at not being sure of taking this route.
"There's a nice ans safe to drink coffee fella right here. They can hurt you but they like being creepy. Don't speak a word and you get no problems. It's better then demon or angels. I also have pocket money for it." The lady frowns at really nit sure. So a girl takes left hand and managed to drag a few steps. Eventually willingly walking beside this little girl. Sure enough wasn't that fair and smells amazing. The masked being at the stall has a full batista machine and clearly was trained to use it. Making 19 unique drinks and was paid responsible. They carry it back with care and all 19 drinks had really got all these tired people zipping. Someone had even started pacing about and bouncing about the walls. A new batch of people are being helped through an application process. They got all filled up and it came around to blood testing for levels of infection. Free medicine and care for other health concerns. A hand to hand combat trail to work with who was able for the things they are singing up for. Giving her age, she wasn't needing to be put to fight match and rather given she was highest sensitivity for spirits - this automatically accepted her, let alone that a trusted undertaker brought her here.
"Pathetic!" The slam of a table, an angry man that doesn't qualify and does understand why he isn't choosen. He doesn't have the sight, his wearing a ribbon over his eyes like she seen before. He was good fit otherwise. They were about to turn him away but she approached carefully and with a sneaky little reach, pulled the ribbon curse off his eyes. Everyone witnessed his eyes color change and that he also sensed his world around him alter. He turned at her as he knows it had to do with her. She backed away with open hands. She got all shy and covered her hood over. He also backed from her in knowing she's not normal. He lost interest as he looked directly at undertakers that hovered about, slight quiver and checking his pulse.
"They aren't grim reapers, which a common mistake." The lady softly sits him to a new table, "Those are undertakers but in order for us to talk more. You have to be confident to accept your reality. A binding spell to keep you blind isn't something done unless it was turly necessary." Taking his hands and talking calmly. The little girl softly picked up the binding curse and then jars it... she wrote on the jar with sharpie. She turn back sitting at the recruitment table and with watching the crowds flooding in and out this core ring tables. She noticed that there was plenty of undertakers at work among these crowds trying to weed more potential acceptable ones and to remove the folks that are cut out with accepting life with the sight they have. She watched other ribbon cursed ones be guided by loose threads. She watched that undertakers took a gradual changing of the ribbon as the closer these candidates came forward.
"You're got the right touch for this." Curiosity softly lowered to her level and looks about at directions she does. He still can't quiet work out what she watching. She noticed a catapillar riding the brim of his hat and a sort of wasp at the crown fold. In fact his changed hat style, it was a bowler hat and now a leather fedora maybe cowboy stay. She can make out the full shape at this angle.
"Is it that guy from before?" Curiosity shook no and takes his hat to hide his face. He considered words carefully, "Is it a blood relative?" She asked again, "Maybe a masked one." She pondered. He looked at her from side eye, "The lost ones is the angelic translation to human tongue. Demons call them the damned. Even among sinners they are the masked one. No one but those with a mask know what their deal is and why they operate. It's often mistaken that they are all one being. But we both know that's not right. Watching them all long enough, even they have individual reactions." She has a better look of the caterpillar. She knows it's not a safe one, which is a interesting detail to take from this omen. She wiggles her feet about at the chair with hands place to her thighs. She stops looking around for a bit.
"It's indeed a mask. Can you help?" She looks at him being all stiff but how quiet he looked down away from her eyes. But she smiled smooth and gets off the chair. She followed him close, at times able to brush his coat and to reach in attempt to hold his hand. But she didn't need to and felt wrong of such things. He stops and she stopped too but nearly walked into him. She softly peered around of why he stops and where this is. A room off from the large venu floor at a stair case. The fire exit here had a long of smokers but were clearly stall holders in that main place. The mask in question is a shadow of damned smoking a dream made cigarette. The smoke from it floats about in swirling purples and greens. The way they are presented was less a thrown bedsheets over a thin figure underneath but rather a paper mashed form that contracts like living skin. The turned away face is using a window reflection to watch their approach and there a annoyance in how they flicked ash away.
"Living but nobility." She snorts, "Pr maybe in better translation is your a dead guy in a uncomfortable lower shelf." She steps breaking the swirling clouds of cigarette fog and straight over to stand at the left of the mask guy. She took in the unfiltered and unprepared auras this guy was making. She was fearless in looking them right in the eye and tilted with a curtain fell expression. A false thin smile and posed hand in pretending shock. The overly drastically way she stands and the uncomfortable angle she softly was tilting into. She raised her brows in smirked notion that they knows she knows, "Clean hands and messy suit." She continued this offset meaning of words and it has worked of breaking ice. Cigarette put out and a huffed of someone that understood. Hands behind back they turn in returning the blank face expression. Literally the clay surface of the face has zero features and no eyes. But she still squaring eyes as she knows they know.
"Another dead one like myself." He mirror her tilt, "Your rather to perfect." She takes this as a compliment either way. A playful left hand flutter.
"At least there are no feral things. It is for the better to keep the peace. That painless notion comes with every that follows commands. We do shepherd where lines cross. The only gift that difference us to undertakers." The mask guy ponders this, "forgive my dyslexic manners of flipping some words about. It helps that I have more human touch here." The mask fella shook at this which was the answer she expected.
"The eyes of no one." He presented left hand.
"I have a few names. Miss Marionette. Tricky. The gloom. My favorite is owned by God eaters." She sounded nothing like her body language. Her voice drips in angry and sorrow. She carried the sound of many burdens crushing her and at the meer moment to start crying. But her hands and turn was confidence. Equally the gloomy mask guy was werid at doing thse opposite things. He sounds opposite of his wording. It was now that this oce broke that the mask offered her a cigarette and she took it. She didn't use it or lite it. It was just put to her pocket temporarily. She swaps it for another, of which this guy lite and draw. He was a few puffs in with a shook head and the shurgs of what body language for laughter. She did that knowing brow lift again and they straight up. A little voice clear.
"You got yourself a scary monster in a girl's human shell." Speaking frankly to Curiosity, "So now I will be a little more frank towards you. You alone." Pointed at Curiosity, "When you loose your shape as an Undertaker, you will learn to be one of us." She blinks in expressing that this guy was correct. That she already reconginized that Curiosity isn't fully a undertaker. Yet it seems that Curiosity doesn't beleive it, he snorted at the notion.
"I have made my dues and know my place." She crossed arms in front of her, "I doubt that anyone could beat my records." She turns with looking at the window, "A mountain on your shoulders." She couldn't prevent a black tear from her right eye, how it stained down her cheek, "You just fathom the concepts before indulging the weight it takes to shatter souls."
"Shattered souls... that is." The masked fella turns back to her, "What are you?"
"I am what happens when you failed to remove a soul name incompletely from the core. If you can fathom that..." She lifted her right hand and pouring out her pores is the clay that formed into her mask, "Than you take that soul and grind the finest sand." She lets the shape loose and pull clumps in reconstruction of itself, "You made filter these bits in the finest strainer." She really grasps it to lock in a temporary peice and holds it over her human face, "Then you begin to reconstruction it back to what it used to be." She wipes it to cling over her face and made a sharp turn to the mask man.
"I have travelled one side to another. I lived many lives and ended them. I was all and none. I seen a start and been there as the end. I have raised high and crawled low. You can't erase the things what carved through your everything. These flaws make us unique and carry strengths of its own." Her mask voice spoke which Curiosity didn't understand nor it seem that he heard her. The merchant mask man bowed his head, and she eased off. She make sure to be back to a human girl. She stares back to the window.
"At least you have time." The merchant turned back to the undertaker, "You are just lost but you have chance to fix that. Dear Curiosity, you can still make forgiveness and pay off any debts you gained. Your life as a human may be lost to time itself. But you have still got your chances. To walk light and be heard." The softly left hand is place on the undertakers shoulder and putting a cigarette in that breast pocket. Approached so fast that Curiosity had no chances of evading or dodge, "It doesn't matter who towards. It only matters to yourself as it's only ourselves to blame for the way things fall." Big healthy thuds, "I am envious of such stronge broad shoulders you are. To carry the decades others forget." The mask fella softly moved to get on with business. Making a last turn back, "What would the other societies call you?" He wondered.
"You can ask them yourself. They ate those of the courts. You ask a god eater what brought them to this place. You ask the lady of Summons or the river Styx for whom repairs the unfixable." She spoke through her mask, "They are scared of me."
"Call me Tricky. The trickiest of human Tricksters. I have many faces and stood many places. I take the broken, lost and neglected." She removed a business card of a stamp, "I have my hands in the most peculiar of things. I do make schemes far grander than any other Trickster." She pats hand to that cigarette in her pocket and soften, "No one will understand the ways I work."
The masked shadow merchant nods too and finishes some small talk to Curiosity. Mostly goods exchange for any rare to use supplies only found in the American Market. Shady dealer had his hands in a lot of things that the undertakers wouldn't expect to get hands on. She stands as a normal girl at the window, looking out to wider car park of things getting a little uncomfortable among the living. Some breaks of fist fighting but it wouldn't be long to escalate fast. She moved away as Curiosity waves her to follow. She follows him to a transport bus of the accepted newbies and right over to a British military army plane in the nearest airfield. The airfield was once for pleasure use and now it is an evacuation plane. There is a second plane for any British civilian to use as emergency escape. Passports in hand of all those people. So that was the UK government excuse to send these planes, to save any trapped tourist that are of their British nationality. They took as many as they could that weren't ill of the infection that didn't have a cure at the moment.
"We will be seeing each other after some basic training." Curiosity brushed the top of her head. Undertakers don't ever use planes, only if they possess into a human. But it be to long a flight to last. She softly nodded and the plane drop door lifted. In take off Curiosity stayed to the ground as they lifted in the air. His hat got left behind. She takes it and wears it. It suited her but a bit big for her now.